


GOD! If I Owned Danny Phantom (Season One)

by RavenBloom



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Challenge by ghostanimal on Fanfiction.net, Danny and Dani are siblings, F/M, Gen, Ghosts are not Dead People, Phantom Twins, Sam and Tucker are A-listers, alternate interpretation of canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 11:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenBloom/pseuds/RavenBloom
Summary: Twin siblings Danny and Dani Fenton fall into the Fenton Ghost Portal and get turned into half-ghosts. You all know how the story should go, but it's not unfolding the same way this time. Different decisions lead to different outcomes and the twins have new challenges to face. Fanfic challenge from ghostanimal.





	1. Pilot Episode

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the real Danny Phantom, which is owned by Butch Hartman. I do, however, own this version of DP. Deal with it.
> 
> Summary: The Fenton Ghost Portal has finally been finished, and the unfortunate Fenton Twins are the one to get it working.

"Come down here, kids!" a voice called from the basement of the Fenton house. This was even though the basement had soundproof walls, and the only way in or out was through the door leading to it from the kitchen.

Daniel Fenton, better known as simply Danny to his friends, looked up from his English homework, nudging his sister with his elbow. The boy leant in, running his hand through his black hair. "Hey, Dani, wake up!" he called in a soft tone. "Dad's calling!"

Said sister, one Danielle Fenton, also known as Dani by the same friends that her older twin brother had, woke up with a mumble, eliciting a series of laughs from the other three kids around the table. The fourteen-year-old yawned and stretched, the red beanie on her head falling onto the floor. The girl, still sleepy from a night of hearing the machinery their parents owned at work, made a grumbling noise and rubbed her eyes.

"Fetch, boy," the boy opposite her commanded. He was a dark blue-eyed blonde, with a skinny frame and short stature, making him look a couple of years younger than his real age of fourteen. A small puppy, a Golden Retriever, bounded to the hat, picked it up and deposited it in the boy's hand. The boy held it out to Dani, who winced and picked up her hat with two fingers.

"Thanks, Terrence," the girl stated, making a face at the dog slobber that covered her favourite hat. "Ugh..." she muttered, holding it at a distance. "This was my favourite red hat!" she complained.

"Does it matter?" A girl beside Terrence looked up, her dark brown eyes glinting with mirth. The Asian girl snickered and brushed one of the stray strands of ink-black hair behind her ear. _"All_ of your hats are exactly the same!"

Dani made another face before throwing her hat at the girl. "Shut it, Penelope!" she retorted right back. "Your favourite shirt is black - just like all of your other shirts!"

Penelope sniffed. "At least my shirts have variety."

"That's enough, girls," chided the red-head sitting next to Danny. She had a blue headband in her hair that complemented her teal eyes nicely. Unlike the other two girls and the two guys of the group, she had long finished her homework and was merely here to act as a part-time tutor to the Fenton twins as well as Penelope Hadley and Terrence Morris. She herself was one of the top scorers in the school, Jasmine Brown, though commonly known as Jazz by her friends, actually having skipped two grades. "Now come on. Mr Fenton called."

With a collective grumble, the teens stood, Terrence with his puppy in his arms, and the group of five headed down the stairs that led to the basement. Danny led the way, and Dani rounded up the rear, making sure the other three didn't stumble or trip in the darker lighting of the basement with the almost telepathic connection that they had. The older of the Fenton twins reached the basement first, and after reaching about for a while, found the light switch on the wall. He flicked it, hoping the thing still worked.

The dim light on the ceiling flickered on, providing the group of five to wander over the basement to reach the Fenton twins' parents on the other end. The two older Fentons, both clad in conspicuous neon hazmat suits, looked up as they approached. Mrs Fenton, one Madeline 'Maddie' Fenton nee Walker, was an attractive redhead in her early forties, clad in a blue jumpsuit with black accents. The woman removed the red goggles she wore and let them sit on her head as she smiled at the teens.

Jack Fenton, Danny and Dani's father as well as Maddie's husband, was a stocky man, also in his early forties but with a heavy build and a streak of white in his otherwise black hair. Despite the fact that he held a sparking tool in his gloved hand, the man, clad in a day-glow orange suit, was jumping around like an excited child. "Come on, kids!" he called brightly. "We're going to make history!"

Penelope, known by her friends as 'Penny', stared warily at the contraption, shaped like an arc with a door that had the words 'Danger: Ghosts' painted onto it, quickly moving to hide behind Danny. "Uh, Danny?" she piped from behind him. "Are you sure that that thing's, you know, safe?" The Asian girl kept behind the boy, who winced at the reminder of his parents' inventions tendency to blow up while in use. The last time that had happened, it had detonated half of the basement-cum-lab.

"Sure it is, Penny!" Maddie Fenton cheerfully piped in, her hood up over her head and her goggles back over her violet eyes. "There'll be no explosions this time, right, Jack?" When the older male Fenton didn't respond, she repeated her sentence again, though through slightly grit teeth. "Right, Jack?"

"Right, Mads!" Jack yelled, springing in front of the teens with his face-shaped welding mask on.

The five teens took a stool each and took a seat, warily keeping an eye on the adults working on the arc, Penny scooting to the very back as she hid partially behind Jazz and Danny. The younger of the Fenton twins scooted over to Danny's other side, peering curiously at her parents' work. "Ya think it'll work this time, Danny?" she murmured.

Danny shook his head. "I hope so, but Mum and Dad can always get... overzealous." Both twins reflexively winced at the statement. "Let's just keep our fingers crossed," the boy suggested.

"Right," Dani echoed.

Both the Fenton children watched with bated breath as the two adults stepped back, finally satisfied with their work. The twins swallowed nervously and reached for each other when their parents reached to flip the switch labelled 'on' beside the contraption, knowing all too well what a thing like that could very well do. Instinctively, they squeezed their eyes shut and waited for the 'boom'. When nothing happened except for a small fizzle, Danny chanced a glance.

One of his blue eyes slowly cracked open. Nothing had happened. _Dani,_ he called to his twin. _It's okay, Dani. Every thing's fine._

_Really?_ Dani deadpanned her thoughts into her twin's mind. _Last time you said that we ended up having ten detentions consecutively._

_I mean it this time!_ Danny insisted. He shook his sister, who finally conceded and opened her eyes. Both glanced warily at the contraption, which was now just the arc with a tunnel-like pathway inside it. The boy looked over to his friends, who had a bored expression written all over their faces. Then, he glanced over to his parents, who looked like they were just about ready to cry in disappointment.

"I can't believe it, Mads," Jack mumbled, defeated. "It didn't work. Again. Just like with Vladdie."

Maddie put her hand on her husband's shoulder with a heavy sigh. "Sorry kids," she muttered. "Jack and I really thought it would work this time. I guess we wasted your time." The two adults slowly trudged up the stairs dejectedly, Jack even breaking down into sobs on the way.

Jazz stood up, dusting her deep blue turtleneck off. The girl stretched with a lazy yawn. "Well," she quipped. "That was a waste of time." The genius teen looked down at her watch and gasped. She immediately turned to the stairs and ran up, shouting back at the group, "Sorry, guys. It's already four and I have a test tomorrow! I'll see you at school!" The girl disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the twins, Penny, Terrence, and his puppy in the basement, staring quite blankly at the arc.

Penny moved out from behind Danny, standing up and wandering over slowly and warily. She peered inside, saying, "It's not going to blow up in my face, right?"

Terrence shook his head from behind her, the tanned blond joining her on the other side of the arc. "Doubt it," he stated matter-of-factly. "If it didn't explode when Mr and Mrs Fenton switched it on, it's unlikely to do so now." The boy was no technological genius - that title was instead owned by the resident popular guy in their school, Tucker Foley, whose smarts had made his one of the most well-liked people in Casper High - however, he still had his talents with electronics, and while Danny doubted he could be trusted with the machinery his parents made, Penny relaxed at his assurance.

The black-haired boy also rose to join his friends, staring into the arc questioningly, with his twin shoving him slightly to the side so she could look as well. Both twins spoke in unison, "Wow... that's a new one." Danny turned to look at the walls beyond the arc. "Especially for our parents," he added. Without looking, he knew that Dani was nodding in agreement. The teen felt something from the machine and instinctively stepped back, along with Dani, who was giving the arc a distrustful look. The twins shared a glance, and both knew that they shared the same feelings about their parents' latest invention.

"This machine _does_ look kind of cool though, don't you agree, guys?" Penny asked curiously. The Asian took a step inside and looked around. "All high tech and stuff, and lots of glowy wires," she added, backing out of the device.

"Why don't you two go in and look around, Dannies?" Terrence asked with the name he had coined for the twins together. "I mean, it can't hurt you if it can't activate, right?" The puppy yipped, possibly in agreement.

Danny and Dani shared a wary glance. _What do you think, Dani?_ Danny asked his twin, his blue eyes reluctant as he debated whether or not to enter the strange machine.

_I dunno__,_ Dani shrugged, her eyes locking with his. _Looks safe enough_.

Danny sighed and stepped forward, Dani quickly following. Both the teens entered the arc, quizzically looking around at the black and green insides of the tunnel. "Dani, hit a light," the boy called out, trying to feel his way around the back of the place. His hands brushed the walls, and briefly, a button. Against his better judgement, he leant onto the wall as he reached for the button.

"Hey!" Dani yelped, and Danny felt his sister trip over his foot and stumble into the wall... hitting the button at the same time. A whirring sound started up from all around the two teens, and the twins were soon able to see each other when glowing green light lit up the tunnel. The twins glanced at each other and paled, only managing to squeak one word out in unison. "Uh-oh."

Pain hit, excruciating pain. Danny's eyes squeezed shut, and the boy let loose a hoarse scream. His nerves were lit like Christmas lights, and he could tell that Dani was in no better condition. Both were on the ground, writhing in indescribable pain as neon green electricity raced through the arc. He reached out to his sister, choking out her name before he collapsed in pain.

After what seemed like forever, the explosion of light died down, and Danny felt the pain recede. "Dani," he gasped out, forcing himself shakily to his feet. "Dani!" he hissed, seeing his sister lying unconscious on the ground. But there was something different about her... "Dani...?" The boy stared in confusion.

The younger twin looked like she had gotten all her colours inverted. Her skin had turned a couple of shades darker, and her raven-black hair had turned white. The blue and red hoodie and pants outfit she had been wearing had also seemed to be turned into a monochromatic version of her usual clothes, with the blue denim hoodie now half white and half black, and the pants coloured similarly. Her red sneakers had also turned mysteriously into white boots. The girl finally stirred at the repeated calling of her name, and she opened her eyes, revealing glowing green irises. "Dan-Danny?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Then, she stopped, gaping. "Danny! Your hair and eyes!" she shrieked.

"What?" Danny nearly stumbled into the wall. His hair fell in front of his face, completely white. He paled and quickly stared out at the mirror that was conveniently placed opposite the arc. His eyes were the same green as his sister's, and instead of his usual white shirt and jeans, he was wearing an all-black ensemble, with two white stripes on either side of his shirt and pants. His sneakers had also turned into white boots as well. He stared down at his hands, surprisingly tan despite the fact that both he and Dani were exceedingly pale.

"Dannies?" Terrence asked, jaw wide. His hand was on the 'off' switch outside of the arc, shaking. His puppy whined a bit and hid behind Penny's legs.

"Dani, Danny?" Penny whispered, her brown eyes wide in terror.

Danny shakily helped Dani out of the portal, and both collapsed onto a chair... except they fell and hit the ground. "What?" Danny yelped, springing up. To his surprise and then horror, he didn't stay on the ground. He floated into the air, and then, he smashed onto the ground again.

"Danny?" Dani cried out, sounding panicked. "I can't find my hands! Or my feet!"

He looked up, seeing that indeed, the white-haired girl was missing her body parts. Both screamed in terror, not sure what was going on. Suddenly, a blue ring appeared around each of their mid-sections, bisecting and passing over them. Danny blinked, and he saw Dani, back to her normal appearance. He looked at himself and realized that he was back to normal too. He got to his feet, and along with a shaken-up Dani, glanced warily at the arc. "What was that?" Danny hissed.

The door to the basement slammed open just as Penny and Terrence joined the twins' side. Jack and Maddie Fenton hastened down the stairs. "Kids!" Jack yelled. "We heard you shouting! What's wrong?"

Maddie was a bit more observant than her husband, though, and she saw that the switch to the arc was turned off. "It's nothing Jack," she assured her husband. "The kids just turned off the power to the machine. Let's turn it back on." And she flipped the switch.

Instantly, a burst of neon green filled the basement, and the arc whirred to life, the area where the metal doors had been turning into a whirlpool of bright, glowing green. All four of the teens stared at it, shocked. The adults were another story. Jack was leaping in joy, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Booyah, Mads! We did it!"

"Mom... Dad?" Danny forced out, eyes transfixed on the machine in front of them. "What is that thing...?"

Maddie and Jack proudly shut the door to the machine and turned around with a bright beaming smile. "This, Danny-boy," Jack said with a childish grin. "Is the Fenton Ghost Portal... "

Danny didn't hear the rest of what his father said. He just looked at his twin, eyes wide.

_Ghost portal?_


	2. Mystery Meat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny and Dani have just started getting used to their powers, but it's not all roses and sunshine for them yet. There's been a change in the lunch menu at school, and a lunch lady isn't very happy about it.

"Alright kiddos, listen up!" Jack's powerful voice boomed in the basement beneath the Fenton household. The stocky man was holding a laser pointer and there was a movable whiteboard beside him, with crudely drawn sketches of the stereotypical bed-sheet ghost scribbled onto it. The ghost hunter had the red laser pointed at one of the ghosts and was going off a long, drawn out tangent about ghosts, mainly about how he would dissect them if he ever caught one. "And then I'll rip it apart, molecule by molecule!" Jack declared with a dramatic sweep of his arm, accidentally tossing the laser pointer at Danny. "Right Mads?" he hollered up the stairs.

"Yes, Jack!" Maddie shouted back, opening the door to reveal her jumpsuit wearing form.

Danny made a face and held his hands up as the laser pointer flew at him. His ghost powers activated on instinct, turning him intangible as the small thing flew right through him and clattered on the ground. Danny shivered at the sensation. "Well," he commented to his twin, who was standing beside him. "That went strangely well."

Dani faked a cough, gesturing to his lower half. She glanced away and refocused on her parents, who were talking at the top of the stairs, Maddie offering Jack a full tray of fudge.

Danny's brow furrowed and the boy glanced down curiously. What he saw made the raven-haired lad blush furiously in embarrassment. He reached down, quickly getting his pants and securing the jeans around him, cursing his newly-found powers. Buckling the belt, he straightened himself just as his father returned, gloved hands sticky with fudge.

"Now, where was I?" Jack muttered, picking up the laser pointer on the ground again. "Oh, right! _Molecule by molecule!"_ he declared dramatically. "And I've just the tool to do it with!" He hefted up a silver and green machine, partially slung around his large form. "The Fenton Molecule Destabiliser!" he announced, pointing the vacuum cleaner-like nozzle at the twins, who winced and stepped back in unison. "This baby sucks the ghost through the head and ejects them as ghost-bits in the Thermos-sack!"

Jack patted the machine fondly, resulting in a loud 'clang-clang' echoing in the basement. Continuing to ramble on about the invention, he picked up a whiteboard marker and began to draw the invention on the surface, speaking animatedly all the while. The machinery of the Fenton Molecule Destabiliser was set down in favour of another machine, apparently called the Fenton Thermos, which was, appropriately enough, shaped like a Thermos.

While Jack was rambling, though, Danny was busy making sure that his pants didn't drop around his ankles again. A jab in the ribs by his twin quickly snapped the boy to attention, and as he glanced over at his sister, he saw her jerking her head at the Portal. "Uh-oh," he mumbled, stepping away from the closed doors. The portal was glowing green again, and the hybrid was seriously worried about it.

The portal's doors opened, two blobs of neon green shooting out of it. Thankfully, Jack had his back turned to the portal as he continued to yammer on about the inventions, and Danny shared a look with Dani. With a nod, both let the glowing rings appear around them, then bisect and transform them into their white-haired, green-eyed other selves. Almost instantly, Danny hovered in the air, and with a bit of concentration, so did Dani. The twins scrambled unsteadily in the air and headed for the blobs.

_Gah!_ Danny thought, reaching out for his sister as the two suddenly shot at the ghosts, which had now taken a form that vaguely resembled octopuses. After the incident with the Ghost Portal that had granted them these alternate forms, they had found that their mental bond had crossed the line over into straight out telepathy. _Dani, can you hear me?_

_Fine, Danny,_ Dani replied, a panicked look on her face as she tried not to smash onto the floor. She hovered unsteadily in the air for a while, her green eyes wandering over to her father, still cheerily talking about his inventions. _I'm just trying not to fall flat on my face._

Danny snorted as he slowly crept up on the two 'ectopuses' with his hands out to grab them, completely forgetting that the green spectres could turn intangible. He grabbed at the things, which quickly faded out of the plane, escaping from his grasp and returning back to normal. Danny cursed, returning to his twin's side with a scowl. He gave his twin an aside glance, prompting the girl to try something too.

The white-haired ghost girl turned up her nose at her brother's signal, rocketing at the ghosts with her fists stretched out. When she was close enough, the ectoplasmic creatures shot off in two different directions and Dani would have crashed into the wall if her intangibility hadn't acted up and sent her careening through the metal walls. A couple of minutes later, she phased back through the wall, her white hair speckled with dirt.

Danny snickered.

The twins then spent several more minutes trying to get the slippery ghosts, until Danny's hand ignited with green energy that he flung at the two ghosts. The boy paused in his tracks, staring at his hand, which had thin wisps of smoke drifting from the palm. _What?_

_Seems like some kind of energy attack,_ Dani deadpanned. _Why don't you do that again, shouting out 'Sugar Sweetheart Mint Twinkle?_

Danny called the energy back again and he blasted the ghostly octopuses with energy until one of them was smoking. Dani copied him, calling up the energy as well and attacking the remaining ghost until both fled back through the Ghost Portal. Their job done, the twins dropped to the floor, though not without accidentally sinking a few inches into the ground a few times until they finally managed to revert back to normal. _That was eventful,_ Danny muttered.

Dani rolled her eyes and shook her head, trying to get any dirt out of her black hair.

"- and this baby can fire anti-ghost plasma! Isn't that cool, kiddos?" Jack boomed, turning back around with yet another gadget in his hands.

"Uh... yeah, dad," Danny said with a nervous smile.

Dani nodded, copying him. "Yeah dad," she said convincingly. "It sounds really cool."

The twins looked at each other as their father went on another tangent about the inventions again. Crisis averted.

* * *

The very next morning, the twins shuffled down the stairs, Dani first, as always, in their signature blue hoodie and red pants with the red beanie, and the white and red T-shirt and jeans respectively. Dani yawned, rubbing her eyes as she took another step down. Her powers kicked in, and as she attempted to walk down the steps, her foot passed through the ground, and she yelped, her feet pulling out as she tumbled down the stairs, strangely unhurt.

_Dani?_ Danny called. _You okay -_ "Whoa!" The elder twin shouted out his surprise as he tripped as well, though it wasn't from intangibility. Nope, his flight had him taking a step in mid-air and the next had his powers turning off, resulting in the inevitable fall. Strangely enough, neither of them were hurt, even though Danny's fall resulted in him nearly falling on Dani's head.

"Ugh," Dani mumbled. "This wasn't what I had in mind for my morning," she complained with a groan. "You okay, bro?"

Danny's hand raised slightly in a thumbs-up, signalling that, yes, the boy was fine.

Groaning, the twins leant on each other for support as they made their way towards the kitchen, where the smell of fresh waffles wafted out to the hungry duo. Dani headed for the table first, practically salivating as Maddie set down a plate of waffles and eggs in front of her. "Thanks, mum!" she chirped, already with her fork up and ready to dig in. Licking her lips, she reached out and got the honey that was put in the middle of the table, drizzling it over her waffles and eating.

Danny, on the other hand, took a seat at the table sometime after Dani had begun to eat, having a healthy portion of food set in front of him by their red-headed mother. As he reached for the honey as well, though, he sank a couple of inches in his chair, and he hastily jumped to his feet, glaring at the offending furniture like it was the reason he had trouble controlling his newly-gained powers.

"Danny?" Maddie asked, looking up from her makeshift workstation at the kitchen counter. Her gloves were on, and Dani had the sneaking suspicion that she was working on some kind of hare-brained invention that her father had started but had lost the interest in finishing. "What's wrong?"

Danny shook his head, running a hand through his black hair. "I'm fine, mum," he assured the woman with a smile on his face.

Dani snickered, earning herself a glare by her twin, but her expression promptly turned to barely disguised horror as her fork phased through her hand, hitting the table, though the waffles thankfully fell back onto the plate. She jumped a little when she couldn't see her hands anymore, and before her mother could see, hastily shoved both her arms under the table.

"Hmm," Maddie said, frowning at the twins. "Well," she started, carrying out a small device shaped like a phone. "The two of you should be more careful. Don't think I didn't hear that fork of yours dropping, young lady."

Dani blushed at the admonishment. "Sorry, mum. What's that?" she asked, eager to change the topic.

Maddie proudly set the phone on the table. "This is the Fenton Finder," she started with a smile. "Jack and I have been working on this for a couple of weeks, and now we're finally done!" She pressed a button, causing the screen of the phone to light up, beeping incessantly. "Ghost presence detected," it beeped out in a mechanical voice. "Two ectoplasmic sources in the room.

Maddie frowned. "That's not right." She held it out to just in front of Dani, upon which it beeped louder, the screen turning red. 'GHOST', it read. The woman tapped it several times. "You're not supposed to be registered as a ghost, Dani. It must be malfunctioning."

Dani opened her mouth, about to speak out to her mother and say that she _was_ a ghost now, well, at least partially, but one look from Danny across the table made her stop in her tracks. _Shouldn't we tell her?_ Dani tried. Her big blue eyes stared at her older twin, her lip quivering convincingly in an imitation of wanting to cry.

_That's not going to fool me, sis,_ Danny bluntly replied. _Besides, mum and dad are _ghost _hunters. They hunt ghosts. Ghosts like _us.

The raven-haired girl winced at the reminder that she wasn't exactly quite human any more. _But,_ she started once more.

Danny didn't let her finish. _I want to tell them too, Dani,_ he admitted softly. _But let's face it, we're in danger._

Dani sighed, hanging her head. Continuing with their breakfast, the Fenton twins stopped their telepathic conversation and kept silent for the rest of the half hour. A knock on the door caught Dani's attention as the girl moved to put her dishes in the sink. She saw Danny also stop in his tracks, tilting his head in mild confusion. _Is mum expecting visitors?_ Dani asked her older brother.

Danny shrugged.

The twins hastened up the stairs to get their school things, letting their parents deal with the visitor at the door. When the duo walked down, they were greeted with the face of Valerie Gray. The green-eyed African-American teen was wearing an all-orange ensemble, complete with an orange headband in her black wavy hair. "Hey Danny," she greeted, though the twins weren't sure which one it actually was. "Dani."

"Val!" Dani squealed. She hugged her cousin tightly and pulled Danny over into the hug, even though the boy protested the action at first. "How've you been, Val?" Dani chirped animatedly. "I haven't seen you in such a long time!"

"Dani's right, Val," Danny replied thoughtfully. "We haven't seen you since you transferred to that private school over in that place - what was it called again? Beach City? Gravity Falls?" Danny shrugged.

"Dad and I moved back. Mum's staying in Jump City," replied the other teen. "I came over to see if I could walk with you to my new school. Casper High, I think it was."

Danny smiled. "That's our school too. Come on, we're going to be late."

Dani laughed, looping an arm around Valerie and Danny, though she had to stand on her toes to do so. "Let's go! Mr Lancer is going to give us detentions if we're late again."

The trio set off, Dani and Danny calling back to their mother. Dani could swear that she heard her father mumbling over some contrived reason why Valerie had to be a ghost - something about never wanting to walk with the two of them before - but she ignored it in favour of cheerfully chatting to her cousin with her twin. "So, Val," she started casually, a smile on her face.

Unbeknownst to the two half-ghosts, the portal in the basement opened up, releasing a ghost from the depths of the mysterious Ghost Zone.

* * *

Terrence Morris was not having a good day.

After narrowly escaping a detention for being late to school by the homeroom teacher Mr Lancer, he had gotten in the way of a fight between the two rival groups of A-list students - the Goths, headed by the ultra-rich Samantha Manson, and the Jocks, spearheaded by the incredibly intelligent and tech-savvy Tucker Foley. And then, he had to witness two of his very best friends, Danny and Dani Fenton embarrass themselves in class when their newly gained ghost powers kicked in, dropping Danny's jeans, and making Dani's shoes get stuck in the floor more than once.

Terrence was just glad that the two Fentons didn't blame him for their predicament.

At least, the blond boy considered, things couldn't get much worse, right? He sorely hoped that he didn't jinx himself there. The boy headed off to the cafeteria after shoving his Maths textbook in his locker and pulling out History. He had to study for that quiz later on, after all, and all be darned if he didn't manage to maintain his straight A record. Arriving in the cafeteria, meekly pushing open the double doors, the blond quickly slunk to a table in the corner that the rest of his group usually occupied.

To his immense surprise, the cafeteria was in complete silence, stripped bare of the usual noise that recess brought with it. Terrence warily took a seat at the table with the Fenton twins, Penny, Jazz, and the new girl Valerie, who was apparently the twins' cousin. Penny was looking at her shoes, and Jazz and Valerie were talking in soft. hushed tones. The twins were glancing around the room warily.

Terrence feared the worst. "What happened?" he asked, barely mustering up enough courage to speak. He kept his tone as soft as was possible, though, to avoid stirring up trouble.

"Penelope happened," Danny replied grimly. "You know how her parents are on the school board, right?"

Terrence nodded.

"Well," Dani said, continuing her brother's sentence, "she convinced them to change the lunch menu to serve vegetarian specials in place of the all-you-can-stand meat dishes." She winced. "The Goths are on our side, but Tucker wasn't very happy about that."

"Foley deserved it," Danny muttered.

Dani shot him a piercing glare, but she didn't say anything further. As if on cue, the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees, making the tension hanging in the air even more palpable. A thin wisp of blue smoke left the twins' mouths, alerting them to... well, something.

"Ghost," Danny and Dani hissed in unison. The boy stood, getting ready to leave the area, but a jock in a red and white letterman jacket shoved him back. Danny grunted as he very nearly fell onto the ground. "What's your problem, Baxter?" he ground out.

"Stay put, Fenturd," Baxter sneered. "Tucker doesn't want anyone to leave unless the menu's changed."

Terrence pitied the blond jock. The quarterback could have been one of the most popular jocks there, that was, until he messed up in the middle of a play, causing the team to possibly lose their chances to be in the tournament early in the year. He was currently trying to redeem himself in Tucker Foley's eyes from being a pitiful failure to returning to become a successful player once more.

The jock then slammed a tray full of the vegetarian stuff onto the table. "You know," he sneered. "I bet this is your fault. You and your weird sister, and your freak show parents must have done this. Why don't you eat then?" Reaching over, he grabbed a fistful of Danny's hair and tried to slam his face down onto the tray.

Danny instantly seemed to react, for his hair suddenly slipped through Baxter's hold, freeing him. "Look everyone!" he yelled. "Dash Baxter is starting a food fight!" He chucked a handful of tofu at someone... which turned out to be one Tucker Foley.

"Get him!" Tucker yelled, and the food fight commenced.

In the midst of the chaos, the group managed to slip away unnoticed. Jazz and Valerie excused themselves to talk, while Terrence and Penny followed after the twins as the duo headed in a certain direction. Terrence was giving short glares to Penny, who shuffled along guiltily.

"Sorry guys," she murmured. "If I had known the trouble you'd be in for this, I'd have told my parents to keep the meat."

Terrence shook his head. "Nah, Penny," he stated offhandedly. "We know you're allergic to red meat. It's not your fault." He was about to talk further, but both twins stopped in their tracks, then started to run hurriedly towards the area of the kitchen. "He-hey!" he yelped. "Slow down, Dannies!" Grabbing Penny by the wrist, they ran off, following the black-haired twins as the latter two sprinted faster and faster.

"Holy mother of spectres!" Dani's startled voice drifted over to them when the smart boy and the school marathoner, that was to say, Penny, reached the kitchen. "That's a..."

"Ghost," Danny ground out in a low voice.

By now, Terrence was timidly creeping up behind the two, Penny even more so as the human duo hid behind the twins. The boy stared in horror at the first ghost he had ever encountered - not including his half-ghost half-human friends in that category. It — he wasn't sure if ghosts could have a gender — resembled a lunch lady, oddly enough, wearing a white apron and rubber gloves of all things, though the green skin and red eyes made him completely wary of it.

It spoke, revealing an unsettlingly female voice that resembled the lunch lady from Casper High when he first visited the school as a child of no more than five for no particular reason other than boredom. "Hello dearies," it cooed, its voice sickeningly sweet. "Would you mind telling me if the menu has been changed?"

Terrence reacted first. "Samantha Manson changed it, ma'am!" he interjected hastily, drawing attention away from the uncomfortably fidgeting Penny. "She organized a petition to have the menu changed to Ultra-Recyclo-Vegan foods!"

"Ultra-Recyclo-Vegan foods?" the ghost repeated slowly, then again in anger. _"Ultra-Recyclo-Vegan foods?"_ Its eye twitched. "This school's menu has been the same for the past fifty years!" it roared, incensed. "I'll show this Samantha Manson why you shouldn't mess with a fifty-year-old menu!" Suddenly turning all sweet again, sit cooed to Terrence, holding out a plateful of chocolate biscuits. "Thank you, dearie. Do you want some?"

Terrence held up his hands. "Sorry, ma'am," he apologized in as polite a manner as he could. "I've already eaten." That was about as much of a lie as he could handle, and the blond wasn't sure if he could eat anything at all. However, that was apparently the wrong answer.

The lunch lady flew into a rage, fire burning down its body as it screeched, "Reject my treats, will you? I'll show you how to appreciate my meals for what they are!" The plates in the cafeteria kitchen were enveloped in a green glow and sent crashing at the quartet, who hastily dove for cover. The school ovens levitated into the air, spraying green fire at the counters and scorching them beyond recognition. "Come out, come out wherever you are, children!" it singsonged.

Terrence sweat-dropped. Was the ghost actually mentally unstable? He hoped not. Dragging Penny into the area behind a counter, he kept her there as they waited for the ghost to pass. He held his breath, afraid that it might hear him breathing. The ghost floated past, but then, something else drew its attention.

"We're going ghost!" two identical yells came by the twins. The white-haired siblings shot into the air, both summoning green spheres into their hands. "Come and get us!" they yelled in eerie unison as they flew out of the kitchen and into the halls of the school. The two disappeared in two streaks of radioactive green, presumably trying to get away from the ghost as fast as possible.

"Don't you dare!" the lunch lady shrieked, gloved hands flinging up into the air. Meat, from the all-steak buffet in the teachers' lounge, perhaps, flew through the air, coalescing into the ghost. It melted together with the meat and grew. The meat covered it completely from head to toe, making it colossal in size, and probably enhancing its strength too. "Come back here!" it roared, voice now echoing menacingly around the building.

Terrence gulped nervously, butterflies in his stomach as he held Penny back, hoping that the ghost would leave them. When it stormed past, leaving globs of meat on the ground as 'footsteps', the blond grabbed Penny and ran out of the kitchen like bats out of hell, putting as much distance as was possible between them and ground zero. The blond pulled the Asian girl around a corner, keeping them hidden in the hallway, until a piercing shriek resonated from the school cafeteria, and then, both teens looked at each other, deciding upon their next course of action quickly.

They ran towards the noise.

Along the way, they met up with the twins, both flying in the air as they headed towards another hallway. "Where at?" Terrence asked, not really bothering to ask what was going on - logic was thrown all out when it came to ghosts, after all.

"Lunch Lady captured Samantha Manson," Dani replied, her eyes glowing green as she glanced around, her hands alight with green energy.

"And they're gone," Danny added with a frown, dropping to his feet and releasing his transformation. "Maybe she can sense other ghosts like we can?"

Penny nodded, a frown on her face. "Sounds legit," she supplied, trying to be helpful. "Maybe we could help?"

Danny and Dani shook their heads in unison. "Our ghost problem, we deal with it," they insisted, in the same, eerie unison.

Terrence and Panny glanced at each other. _Creepy_, was the message conveyed. "But we need to find them," the boy protested.

"Dani and I'll split up. We can cover more ground this way, so - " Danny stopped speaking, and Dani vanished from sight. "Mr Lancer!" he said, startled.

"Mister Fenton, Mister Morris," the balding teacher snapped, "and you, Miss Hadley! What are the three of you doing here? We have an evacuation! One of our students has gone missing! All students are to report to the field this instant!"

"Yes, sir!" Terrence snapped to attention, nervously laughing to try and cover up the fact that he had been the cause of Manson's disappearance. "We'll be right out, sir."

The English teacher shooed the three of them out of the building and as soon as he was out of sight, Danny returned back to his ghost form.

Terrence shivered. It was unsettling, looking at how Danny suddenly turned white-haired, and his eyes turned from bright, lively blue to a glowing, dead green. He remained silent, not mentioning the fact that the hairs on his skin were standing up.

Danny seemed to notice that, though, and simply gave him a short glance. The ghost teen hovered into the air, and spoke calmly, "Dani, you can come out now." He reached a hand into the walls of the school, phasing right through the walls, and tugged, pulling Dani back. The girl tumbled through, falling onto Danny with a short yelp. "Dani!" the boy complained. "Get off!"

"Fine!" Dani snapped, hovering to her feet. She looked around, a hand reaching to the back of her neck and absently toying with her white ponytail. "Where's Lancer?"

"Gone," Penny interrupted. "I don't mean to be rude, but we really need to find Samantha Manson before things get worse."

Dani snorted contemptuously at that. "Manson doesn't need saving. The Lunch Lady'll teach her good on why she shouldn't be around."

Danny gave his twin a very sharp look. "Dani," he started slowly. "Are you suggesting that we leave someone in the hands of a ghost that might be endangering their life?"

The white-haired girl stuck out her tongue. "So?" she mocked. "You know I don't like her."

Danny opened his mouth to start arguing, but Terrence cleared his throat. "Uh, Dannies," he started meekly. "I don't mean to interrupt, but Penny's right."

Dani scowled. "Fine," she muttered, "where is she?"

Terrence frowned for a second. "Can't your ghost-tracking skills find her?"

Danny shook his head. "It doesn't work like that," he explained.

"A ghost appears near us, then we sense it. We can't figure out where they are," Dani added.

Terrence frowned. "You got one of your parents' ghost sensing doohickeys around?" he asked reluctantly. The Fentons were eccentric inventors, and though their inventions worked most of the time, it was tricky getting out of the mindset of their few, yet spectacular failures. When Danny tosses a phone-shaped device at him, the blond caught it and immediately started re-calibrating the device to suit his needs.

Terrence Morris was no tech genius by any means, but the boy was the son of a technician and a programmer, so he knew his way around mechanical stuff. In a matter of minutes, he finished his work on the device and carefully switched it on. When it registered two green dots on the radar screen, he displayed a thumbs up to the twins. The boy tinkered with the menu for a bit longer, altering the range displayed until he could see the whole school on the screen. "...and they're in the meat locker," he informed, shutting the device and sliding it into his pocket. For now, he would hold on to it.

"Meat locker," Dani and Danny chorused in unison. "Got it." They duo dived through the walls, and after waiting for over half-an-hour, during which there were no teachers around, thankfully, the two flew through the walls again. To be more specific, they didn't use their flying abilities. They literally phased right through the wall, back first. Samantha Manson was lying on the ground, unconscious, right next to them.

"Ugh," Danny grumbled. The teen tried to get up, but in a split second, he just collapsed again.

Terrence waved his hand over the boy's face. No response. "He's out cold," he remarked. "Dani?"

Penny did the same. "Out like a light, Terr. The fight must've taken a lot out of them."

The two shared a look and sighed. They then went for the twins, Terrence picking up Danny with some difficulty, and Penny scooping up Dani. "Fenton's home?" Terrence asked, struggling a bit with Danny's weight. Even for someone who was slightly underweight, Danny still weighed a ton to the skinny tech geek.

On the other hand, Penny, a school athlete in peak physical condition for her age, was easily able to pick the also rather underweight Dani up in her arms. "Yup," she confirmed. She eyed Terrence for a bit. "Having trouble?" she asked, and Terrence could see her hiding a giggle.

"Nope," he grumbled, hefting Danny up. "Let's go."

* * *

Danny woke up in his bedroom, a splitting headache. "Ugh," he spluttered. "Why does my head feel like someone used a bus to ram it into a wall?"

Across the room, Dani slowly sat up. "Speak for yourself," she huffed. Raising a hand, she rubbed her temples. "I feel like Coach made us run ten laps around the field, do fifty push-ups, then had us do relay for ten miles."

The boy ran a hand through his hair then sat up as well, instantly regretting the decision and lying back down. "Okay, bad idea. How did we get back here, anyway? I remember we were at school."

"We had to carry the two of you back here," Terrence's voice was heard as the blond walked in, flexing his arms and wincing. Penny followed, quickly closing the door. "You've been out for two hours, by the way," he chirped, unusually bright. "School was cancelled early."

Penny was silent, perhaps still feeling guilt over what she had caused to happen.

Danny slowly got to his feet, stumbling a little, disoriented, and walked over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Penny," he started softly. "It's fine, we don't blame you for this."

"Yeah," Dani chimed in from across the room. "Besides, we can solve this together, can't we?" She turned, looking expectantly at her older twin, who nodded in agreement. "See?" she said, smiling at Penny. "Relax, Penny."

The next day, as the four were walking to school together. Danny and Dani stopped, gobsmacked at the enormous protest that was going on in the school grounds. In turn, Terrence and Penny crashed into them, sending all four sprawling to the ground. The black-haired teen got up and brushed off his clothes, helping his friends and sister pick up their thing before the group turned to the protest going on. "Anyone has an idea of what's going on?" he spluttered, utterly confused.

"Bring back the meat!" roared a group of jocks.

"Let the greens stay!" shouted another group, comprised of various cheerleaders.

"Bring it back!"

"Let it stay!"

"Back!"

"Stay!"

"Back!"

"Stay!"

Dani hid a snort at the way the two groups were doing their protest. The group of four carefully treaded their way into the school, hoping not to get noticed by the two popular teen leaders. No such luck. "Get 'em!" shouted two voices at once. A cheerleader posse got their hands on Penny and dragged her into the black and green rally set up by Goth leader Samantha Manson while two jocks grabbed Terrence by the back of his shirt and pulled him into the meat-themed protest of Tucker Foley.

"Uh-oh," Danny muttered, paling as the two sides cornered the twins. "We're in trouble," he confirmed to his twin.

"Yep," Dani agreed, sticking close to him as the two tried to find a way to slip away. "Uh, run?" she offered.

"Run," Danny conceded. The twins made a run for it as the two groups chased behind, yelling out, "Join us!" Danny tugged his sister out of the way as the Green Goths chucked a leek in the face of one of the jocks, nearly hitting her. The Meat Jocks retaliated by taking part of the usual meat served at lunchtime and throwing it right back in their faces. Danny had to turn intangible to avoid it, but luckily, no one noticed in the chaos.

"There you are, dearies!" an eerily familiar voice boomed from behind all of them. "I'll take that, thank you!" The meat was plucked from the Meat Jocks and the Green Goths' clothes by a mysterious force.

The twins had a bad feeling they knew what it was. After a wisp of frosty mist left their mouths, they knew it. "Dang it," they echoed in unison. The twins turned to see an enormous slop monster advancing on the school - just like the one they had fought the day before, but even bigger and with a multitude of mini meat minions by its side. _Go ghost?_ Danny asked.

_What do you think?_

As soon as the rest of the school had scattered in panic, both twins transformed. Hovering in the air, the phantom duo summoned their energy beams and started firing away, zapping them one by one into ashes. "Contest, Dani?" Danny shouted, turning his back to zap a meat minion into blackened dust behind his sister.

"Fastest time or highest number?" Dani yelled back.

"Most in five minutes!" Dany charged his hands up with glowing energy and flew at the monsters. "Go!" It wasn't as easy as it looked. The twins were still practising their powers, and while flight was a trick they had mastered more or less, their invisibility and tangibility would randomly kick in or disappear. Luckily for them, the minions were very easily destroyed. In no time, all of the meaty helpers were reduced to smoking ashes. "Fourteen!" he declared, grinning.

"Fifteen!" Dani returned smiling as she folded her arms over her chest. Her green eyes suddenly widened. "Uh-oh," she muttered, her fingers lighting up with green. "Look behind you!" she shouted out, firing yet again.

Danny whipped back as her energy beam soared over his head and smashed into a meat minion, disintegrating it into ashes. To his horror and surprise, all the ashes of the burnt meat reformed into the blob-like minions again. "Seriously?" the teen snapped. The minions lunged at him and Dani, and in panic, Danny tried to activate his intangibility. Unfortunately, he didn't do that. He turned human, and the meat things caught him, throwing him onto the ground.

"Danny!" the white-haired girl yelled. Looking around, she cursed, trying to find something to help him. She zoomed down to the ground, avoiding the minions, and started firing away again. She tripped, falling face-first onto the ground as her foot caught on something - a bag. Danny's schoolbag, more precisely.

Danny had an idea. "Dani!" he yelled. "I have Dad's thermos in there! Maybe it can do something?"

Dani fumbled around, finally pulling the contraption out. "This one?" she yelled back, lifting into the air. "What can this do?"

Danny shrugged. "Just zap me free! We can figure something out!" Once he was freed by thin green beams of energy, Danny transformed and took into the air again. Taking the thermos from Dani, he looked it over. "So, how is this going to work?" he muttered, puzzled.

"Severing spooks!" the booming voice of their father cut sharply into the battlefield, and both teens turned to see their father staring at them. "Mads, _ghosts!_ And they have the Fenton Thermos!" He shook his black-gloved fist at them. "Don't open the cap, you giggling ghosties!"

_Oh, open the cap._ Danny unscrewed the top and closed his eyes, holding it out in front of him as he pulled off the chrome cap. A sort of whirlpool effect happened — a green cyclone sucked in the monsters, though all the meat was left outside the Thermos, leaving a large splatter of meat slop on the ground. "Yes!" he and Dani cheered in unison. Quickly turning the Thermos onto the Lunch Lady Ghost, they had to wince as her shrill scream was heard when she was pulled into the Thermos as well.

As if on cue, the hiding teenagers slowly crept out of their hiding places. "Is the disaster over?" Tucker Foley whimpered, looking like he had wet his pants.

Samantha Manson peered out from her hiding spot. "Looks like it," she mumbled. "This is why greens are better!" she roared, finding her wind again. "Let the greens stay!"

It was echoed by her posse and the ones that had supported her protest.

"No!" Tucker shouted back. "Bring the meat back!"

In the chaos that arose once again, Penny and Terrence slipped from the amassed crowds and back to the twins, who managed to turn back into human forms unnoticed. "Well," Penny said to them, smiling softly as she rubbed her arm where she had been grabbed. "That was anti-climatic."

Terrence snickered. "You said it, sister." He glanced at the Thermos with a wary look. "You sure that's safe?" he asked warily.

Danny shrugged. "Probably," he muttered.

"Students!" the scandalized voice of Mr Lancer could be heard as the students stopped their protests. "What have you been doing?"

"... and that's our cue to leave," Dani deduced.

"Agreed," the other three chorused. They instantly weaved through the crowds and headed right into the school just as the bell rung. All four of the students hid behind the door, looking out through the windows at the fate that their peers were about to experience. Mr Lancer looked to be giving quite the tongue lashing.

"- and as punishment, all of you will clean this school head to toe! Ms Manson, Mr Foley, you two are exempted from this due to your fright yesterday, and your weak heart condition respectively. However, you will act as their overseers for the day."

Dani and Danny scowled in unison. The twins looked at each other and smiled. Once the two were glaring at each other next to a dumpster half-filled with meat and vegetables, the twins combined their powers, turning the dumpster intangible partially. It just so happened that the meant and vegetables had been separated into two piles, and each pile was dumped onto the popular duo. Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley shrieked, covered from head to toe in burnt meat and trampled greens respectively.

Snickering, the twins held their hands up and high-fived each other. Turning to Penny and Terrance, the twins set their arms around their shoulders, with Terrence on Danny's left and Penny on Dani's right, and the twins next to each other, and they headed off, laughing.

Danny and Dani looked over their shoulder in unison, smiling as their eyes gleamed a bright, glowing green.


	3. Parental Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a school dance coming up, and the Fenton Twins have to contend with a dragon hot on their heels while they try finding a date.

"Hey, kids!" Jack's powerful voice boomed through the Fenton household early the next morning. "Come down here for a moment!"

The Fenton twins were still in bed, and the shout of their father successfully startled them awake. Danny spluttered, shooting up straight in bed as he jumped, nearly shooting himself up and into the ceiling of his shared room with his twin. Dani, on the other hand, clambered up with her black hair frazzled and wild, the girl yawning as she rubbed her eyes.

"Whazzat?" the younger twin slurred, half-asleep.

Danny sighed, running a hand through his short hair as the half-ghost boy got to his feet, yawning as he stretched and hearing his joints pop a little from the stiffness of the night before. "Dad's come up with some invention again," he informed his twin, shaking his head to get any stubbornly sticking out hair into its natural style — somewhat spiky in the front and shorter and neater in the back. "We should probably go and see what he wants after we shower and whatever."

Dani jumped to her feet, already attempting to tame her bedhead. "I call the shower first!" the shorter of the two called, struggling with her wild hair as she went to her chest-of-drawers, digging out her clothes for the day — which was her usual blue hoodie and ripped jeans, along with her red beanie hat — and tossing them onto her bed haphazardly before she ran towards the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom.

"Hey! Tidy up before you go!" the older twin yelled at his sister, only for his towel to be chucked towards his face for his trouble. The boy snorted, and smiled in amusement at his sister, rolling his eyes ever so slightly.

After roughly half an hour, both the twins were done with their respective showers and dressed for school. Danny snatched each of their backpacks up from the corner, chucking his sister's at her in retribution for the towel as they headed down the stairs to the basement, bidding their mother good morning on the way there. "What's up, dad?" the older of the twins asked, blinking owlishly at the chrome fishing rod that the hefty man was holding proudly.

"Kids!" the middle-aged man exclaimed enthusiastically. "Just in time. This is the Fenton Ghost Fisher! Now ain't she a beauty?" Jack asked with a wide, goofy grin.

Dani rolled her eyes. "Uh... yeah, dad," the girl said with an awkward, forced smile. "Of course she is!" The half-ghost girl tugged on her red beanie for a moment. "Uh... we still haven't had breakfast yet, so maybe we... uh... should get going before it's time for school and we're late?" She looked over at Danny, blue eyes pleading with her brother to come up with an excuse to get out of the basement before their father's invention came to life and potentially attacked them — or worse, revealed them to their trigger-happy father.

Danny didn't think that was a good idea either way. The teen racked his mind for an excuse, and coming up empty, he gave his little sister an awkward shrug of the shoulders, watching silently as their father tossed the line into the open portal, the hook going far into the swirling green depths of the ghost portal. At this point, Danny silently beckoned his sister to take a few steps back, and stepped back himself, not wanting to be caught in the line of fire of any of the multiple ghost-detecting devices his father was wearing on him.

"Ooh, gotta go!" Jack suddenly bellowed. He shoved the metal body of the fishing rod into Danny's hands, telling him, "Hold onto it for a while, Danny-boy. Your old man will be right back after he goes to the little ghost hunter's room!" The large man lumbered up the stairs in the basement with surprising grace, and his large blocky form squeezed out the door, racing to get to the bathroom.

Dani crept up closer to her brother, looking warily at the ghost portal. "Well, dad's out. Should we reel this thing back in, close the portal and scram off to school? Penny, Terrence and Val are probably waiting at our usual meet spot by now!" The girl uneasily toyed with the straps of her backpack, looking around the basement lab.

"Good idea," Danny mused, jerking forward suddenly when something tugged at the hook on the other end of the rod. "Whoa! The rod caught something!" he exclaimed. "Gotta reel it back in and toss it back into the Zone!" The half-ghost boy dug his heels into the ground, trying not to get pulled into the portal while he tugged on the other end of the Fenton Ghost Fisher, slowly reeling the line back in until it was easier to stand. "Little help, Dani?"

"Gotcha." Dani reached over to grab his arm, pulling him back from pitching forward as the older reeled the rest of the line back in.

As the hook pulled in, it was hooked onto the strap of an elaborate amulet, which in turn was around the neck of a scaly dragon — a ghost dragon.

"Oh no," the twins uttered in unison, looking at each other. "We're going ghost!" White rings passed over the duo, turning them into their spectral alter-egos, and the twin hybrids took to the air, gloved hands lit up with green ectoplasmic energy.

The dragon snorted a plume of green fire towards the two and roared, prompting Danny to blast it with green energy, making it retract a little, then stretch the long scaly neck forward in anger.

"Great job, hero!" Dani snarked at her older brother. "Now it's angry!"

"Oh, so it's my fault now? I don't see _you_ trying to help!" The older twin started firing off blasts of energy one after the other in rapid succession. Each hit made the dragon hiss in pain. "Come on! The both of us should be able to toss it back into the portal with enough power!"

Dani nodded, preparing to fire off blasts of her own as she drifted a safe distance back, her hands lit up with green energy. Both the siblings worked in unison, managing to evade getting burned by the ghostly flames as well as getting in their own hits.

All of a sudden, the dragon shifted in form to a young woman with pale green skin, red eyes, and blonde hair in a braid, wearing a Medieval dress in blue as she looked around. "Where am I?" she mused aloud. "Oh, I'll be late for the ball! The prince will be so angry with me!" she fretted, turning around and flying back into the portal without even bothering to look at either of the ghost twins.

The portal door shut behind her, and Danny glanced over at his sister at the control panel, confusion clear in his expression.

Dani shrugged, lifting her hand off the button to shut the portal and transforming back into human form. She looked at the clock, instantly freaking out. "Danny, we're going to be so late!"

The boy yelped, and rushed forward, taking her hand as he transformed back, the twins running for the door.

Neither noticed the gleaming amulet that had fallen into Danny's backpack.

* * *

"Did you hear about the dance?"

"Awh man, I hope I get a date!"

"Who d'ya think is gonna be the Prom Queen this time? Paulina is deffo out of the running, right?"

Dani raised a brow as she walked into the school with her twin beside her. She looked over at him, getting a casual shrug that indicated he didn't really know and wasn't very interested in knowing, and rolled her blue eyes, widening her stride a little to walk over to their small group of friends, hiking her backpack up onto her shoulder. "Hey!" she called, racing over. "Jazz! Penny! Terrance!" She grabbed onto her beanie to make sure it didn't fall off as she weaved through the pushing and shoving crowd of students. "Any of you see Val around?"

Penny shook her head, the Asian girl tossing shoulder-length black hair over her shoulder as she hugged her morning session textbooks to her chest, standing up on her tiptoes to see if she could see the African-American transfer student anywhere in the morning student crowd. "Nope, nowhere," she said, shaking her head again in the negative. "I'll let her know you're looking for her if I see her, though? We have Math together, and I think that's my first class." The girl looked at her timetable again to affirm her statement and nodded. "Definitely first period."

"Hmm, what about homeroom?" Terrence asked. "Doesn't she share one with you two?" The boy raised a brow slightly. "I heard her mentioning something about Mr Lancer yesterday, and she doesn't have our English class with him, so doesn't she have homeroom?"

Jazz shook her head, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. "Mr Lancer also teaches English Literature and Calculus," she pointed out. "And you don't take his Calculus class, plus you hate English Lit with a passion." The redheaded genius patted one of the thick books in her hand with a careful fondness, beaming at it. "Speaking about English Lit, I have that as my first class after homeroom, and I really gotta go," she informed. "I'll see you guys later, bye!"

"See ya, Jazz!" Dani called. She turned to the others of the group, a smile on her face when she finally realized what the students had been talking about. "It's prom week!" she cheered with a grin. "Oh man, this is going to be a blast! Last year totally bombed for us, but this one should be great!" She pumped a fist into the air energetically, her ponytail bobbing eagerly as the girl bounded on her heels. "What do you think about that, guys?" she asked with a grin.

Her older twin frowned. "I dunno, Dani. Remember what happened last year at dance night?" he asked, grimacing at the mention of the mortifying 'punch' incident. "I _really _don't want a repeat of the 'incident', and I don't think Penny or Terrence want one either."

Terrence snorted. "Nah, man, I'm cool with repeating the 'punch incident'," he said, the blond flippantly waving it off with an enthusiastic grin. "I mean, hot girls, cute girls, and more beauties all dolled up to dance! I mean, who wouldn't want to dance with the dance champion of Amity for the last three years?" The blue-eyed boy shot a passing girl a dazzling grin, and the girl offered him a quick wink in return before walking off like nothing had happened. "See?" Terrence boasted with a smile. "The ladies dig me, man."

The Asian girl of the group snorted, lightly punching her blonde friend. "Yeah, yeah, braggart. Soak up the attention for the rest of the week, and then you can go back to being a nobody," she teased. "You're only popular when it comes to dances. Once they're over, you get dumped again. I, on the other hand, and content with having not to go to prom." She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a mock-haughty sniff. "Honestly, though, I can't go even if I wanted to. Mum and Dad are going out on a family trip to see Grandma in China, and they want me to come with for the weekend," she explained. "You three and Jazz are on your own. And Terr, for goodness sake, don't bring along Rex to the dance."

The blond stuck his tongue out. "Rex is a perfectly good boy," he argued, defending his Golden Retriever.

Ignoring the two bickering as usual, Dani and Danny turned to each other as they headed for their lockers, needing to get their books before their shared classes. "So are you going to ask Miss-I'm-A-Goth to the dance?" the younger twin asked as she opened her locker to retrieve her Physics textbook. "You know you're going to fail, yeah? She has tons of guys wanting to get her for the dance, though it's not like she goes with them anyway."

The older boy snorted. "And you going to ask Tucker-Nerds-A-Lot to the dance?" he shot back with a huff. "It's not like he likes you, anyway." Pulling out his own Physics book, the boy closed the door and rested a hand on the locker as he dug through the pockets of his baggy jeans. "He barely even knows you exist, Dani." Danny pulled out his phone, flicking through his picture gallery to get to the schedule for the day. "Let's see... Physics... Chem... Lit... Algebra..." he listed off slowly, finally dropping his phone back into his pocket."

The girl sniffed. "Don't mock me, Dan," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You know that you don't stand a chance either, so don't mock a girl for dreaming." She looked over at the crowd. "Oh, what do you know? Miss I'm-Too-Good-For-You is coming here now. Why don't you ask her about it now?" She slammed her locker door shut with a little more force than was actually necessary as she folded her arms, her Physics book in her grasp while she leaned on the metal locker. Her blue eyes were glowering at her brother in annoyance.

The siblings had their spats here and there, though it usually didn't last beyond the last bell of the school day. Dani was simply annoyed right now, and she wanted him to see how badly he was doing now.

Danny frowned. "Fine, I will." He handed his textbook over to her, which she easily took, then marched over to the 'Goth' posse, already seeing Paulina, the school's resident cheerleader captain, and her cheerleading squad group gather to the side. He cleared his throat when he was close enough to the black-haired lead Goth, pulling himself to his full height. "Hey, Sam," he said in as even as a voice he could muster. "Are you going to the dance?" The smile he had on was at best awkward, and it was obvious that he was nervous, though his voice was strangely even.

Samantha Manson turned around, raising a brow. "Not really," she said with a casual shrug of her shoulders, making the older boy look crestfallen. "But I've been swamped by people asking me. Can you believe that?" She smirked in amusement, turning away.

Danny just sighed, accepting defeat as the black-haired girl walked off. However, it seemed like he was in luck, as Paulina sashayed over. "Uh... hi, Paulina," he stammered out, taken aback when the cheer captain, second only to Sam in the school's popularity hierarchy, smiled flirtatiously at him. "D-did you want something?"

The Latina smiled, batting her lashes. "Hello Danny," she cooed in a sickeningly sweet voice, that, for some reason, Danny didn't pick up on. "I heard you trying to ask Manson out. You _know_ she's never going to agree, don't you?" Her lips were pulled into a syrupy smile, and she fluttered thick black lashes at the older Fenton twin. "Do you _really_ want to let her keep on putting you down like that?" she continued, still batting her lashes. "It would be such a waste of your time when you could be chasing someone else, you know."

Dani narrowed her blue eyes at the cheerleader in suspicion. _I know what you're trying to pull, Sanchez... leave my brother alone,_ she thought with a scowl on her face. Her eyes would have been a blazing green if she had looked into a mirror, but thankfully, no one else seemed to notice the situation, which made her glad enough. Fed up with hearing the Latina trying to sweet talk and charm her twin brother into humiliating the Goth A-lister for her, Dani took action. "Back off, Paulina," she sneered at the cheer captain. "You're salty over losing out to Manson in the popularity contest, so what? Leave me and my brother _alone_," she emphasized. To make sure it entered the cheerleader's thick head, the black-haired half-ghost girl grabbed a cup of soda from a nearby student and splashed the fizzy drink onto the Latina's garish pink blouse with a glare.

Paulina shrieked as loudly as was possible, looking down at her ruined blouse in horror. "Oh, you're gonna pay for this, Fenton!" she fumed, but before a teacher could interrupt it, the other cheerleaders were quickly crowding around her and herding the Latina away towards the bathroom to change, none of the squad wanting to make a scene... well, more than it already was, anyway.

Dani harrumphed at the Latina snob and shoved Danny's book right back into his hands. "I really hate that girl," she muttered as she stormed off to homeroom.

* * *

Terrence caught up with Danny as Dani stormed off towards the direction of class, the blond quizzically staring after the fired-up girl. "What's got her in a twist?" he commented, stopping to open his locker, which was located right across the corridor from Danny's. "I haven't seen her this angry since Baxter gave you that wedgie last week." He pulled out his books, which were all identical to Danny's, and locked the locker, making sure that no one could pull a cruel prank on him like what happened to the Alfonzo kid from the grade below theirs the last week.

The black-haired teen sighed as he leaned against his shut locker door. "She got all riled up when Paulina tried to flirt with me," Danny explained. "She probably wanted me to do something for her in exchange," he said in reference to the Latina A-lister, "but you know how she gets." Back to talking about Dani. "Dani grabbed someone's soda and emptied it over her shirt. Made a big scene and then there she goes," he said, waving a hand in Dani's general direction. The older teen grimaced, and continued, "This is going to be terrible for our PR."

The blue-eyed dance champion suppressed a snort as he pushed through the thinning student crowd to get to Danny. "Yeah, right," he said with a mildly disdainful tone in his voice. His voice lightened back to the cheerful, optimistic tone it was nearly always in — that he _made_ sure to keep it in. "But you know that we're already out of chances to join the popular kids, anyway." Terrence cleared his throat, hoping that his good friend hadn't caught onto his darker tone and the blond leaned on the locker door next to Danny's. "Speaking of the dance, though, you gonna go?"

The half-ghost looked down at his sneakers like they were truckloads more interesting than the topic at hand. "Class is going to start soon," Danny interrupted hastily, "let's get going first." Like someone was on his tail, he immediately headed off to their homeroom, shouldering his way past students that were only now beginning to crowd around their lockers to get their books for class.

"Hey! No avoiding the topic, Danny!" Terrence called, rushing after him so that he wouldn't lose track of his friend in the crowd of students. He finally managed to catch the older of the Fenton twins at the door to their class. "I'm being serious, Danny. Are you going to the dance?" The teen slid into his usual seat at the side of the class and he patted the chair beside him, looking up at Danny.

The half-ghost sat down in the indicated seat, slowly shaking his head in response. "I'm not sure," he said with a sigh, putting his head in his hands. "I know that you love the school dances and you don't want to go alone, but I don't have a date," he reminded the blond, "and yes, I know that I could ask Jazz or Val, or even Dani as one of those 'friends-only' platonic dates, but it's the principle of the matter, you know?" Blowing out his cheeks in what Terrence could only assume to be frustration, the blue-eyed boy leaned back in his seat.

Terrence reached over, giving his friend an encouraging pat on the back. "That's rough, buddy," he said sympathetically, looking over at his friend. While Terrence was usually a second or third option by girls for dances, mostly due to the 'best dancer' awards the school gave out, Danny sure wasn't. Maybe he could ask a favour from someone? ...no, he couldn't be sure that would work, and besides, owing someone was usually a bad idea. Well, he'd figure something out, he was sure.

"We'll talk about this later," he told Danny firmly. "I'm going to get you a date to the dance, I promise, buddy." Ignoring Danny's quiet protests, the blond straightened up in his seat as Mr Lancer walked in to begin taking attendance.

When the bell rang and homeroom ended, Terrence was about to get to his feet and drag his friend to their next class, but before he could, someone unexpected walked up to Danny — Star Bergen, Sam Manson's lead lackey and not-so-secret best friend to Paulina Sanchez, which meant that while she wasn't on the top of the school's popularity hierarchy, she was still in the top three for the female side of school. But everyone knew better than to assume the ditzy-looking blonde was just an air-headed cheerleader who just happened to like the pastel goth look — she was Sam Manson's, and Paulina's, to be fair, right-hand woman, after all.

"Hi Danny," Star began to the perplexed half-ghost teen with a shy smile. "I happened to overhear you in class and you said that you didn't have a date to go to the dance with..." she trailed off and smiled suggestively at the teen. "I'm sure you know what I mean, right?"

Terrence didn't trust that at all. Danny had said that Dani had ended up publically humiliating Paulina that morning, and he would certainly bet his allowance for the month that the Hispanic cheerleader had asked her best friend to set up _his_ best friend just to get back at the younger Fenton twin. The blond knew his friend well enough to know that at this point, his attention was completely off him and onto the popular girl, so he didn't even bother trying to stop his friend from possibly making a fool of himself, even if Terrence knew that he'd end up regretting it by ten minutes.

"O-oh, uh," Danny stammered, taken off guard by suddenly having one of the A-listers speak to him and basically ask him to be her date to the dance. He didn't seem to sense that anything was off at all. "Uh, s-sure!" He stood up abruptly, and his bag, which he had been carrying with him because the teen couldn't be bothered to physically search through his locker for his homework between each class, clattered to the floor, and an amulet that was glowing green fell out of his open bag.

"Ooh! This is pretty!" Star cooed as she picked it up, looking at the green gem under the classroom lighting. "Did you get this to give to the girl you asked out for the dance?" she asked, a slight hint of disdain coming through in the statement. "It's very shiny!"

Terrence could practically _see _the gears turning in Danny's head.

"Oh, uh, yeah!" the black-haired teen exclaimed as he gathered his things into the bag. "So, um, if you'll do me the honour of coming to the dance with me, this necklace is yours!"

Terrence suppressed a groan. _Now he just sounds desperate._

Star beamed as she put on the necklace and leaned in. "How do I look?" the cheerleader asked, making sure to flaunt the jewellery. "Anyway, though, I'll gladly be your date to the dance! Pick me up Friday at seven, okay?" Before Danny could answer her, the blonde skipped away, no doubt going to Paulina or Sam to flaunt what she had gotten by conning the poor boy.

"Bad move, man," the blond teen said to his friend. "You know the A-listers are a bunch of backstabbing traitors," he cautioned, reaching over to help Danny with the rest of his things. Seeing the dazed look still in Danny's eyes, though, Terrence sighed. He'd lost him already.

Neither of the teenage boys noticed Star's blue eyes glow a toxic green as the A-lister sauntered off.

* * *

"Ms Fenton, wake up!" A ruler smacked onto Dani's desk just beside the sleeping teen's ear, startling her awake and making her shoot straight up and back, nearly causing her to tumble back when her chair began pitching back as well. Thankfully for the black-haired girl's dignity, her chair's back caught onto the front of the desk belonging to the person behind her.

"Uh, huh? What? Who?" Dani spluttered, her mind still clouded and foggy with sleep. She then registered Mr Lancer giving her a stern glare right next to her desk, and she felt her face grow warm when she realised that she had fallen asleep in the middle of Literature _again._ Well, it wasn't as if she could control being dead tired! Unlike her twin, Dani kept a very rigid sleep cycle — at least eight hours per night was the minimum she needed to not fall asleep in the day, so perhaps she probably shouldn't have stayed up that late the previous night with Danny, trying to figure out the Ghost Portal and the Fenton Thermos.

The fact that her dad had woken her up so early in the morning really didn't help.

"That's the fourth time this month, Ms Fenton," the balding teacher lectured. "Detention for you, today, and I want to see your parents this week!"

Dani groaned. "Yes, Mr Lancer," she mumbled in defeat. The girl flopped back onto her desk as soon as the man turned his back, trying not to imagine how terrible things were going to go if her mother caught wind of her sleeping in class. "Great," she muttered to herself, fighting the urge to slam her head into the desk. "This is _just _great."

Still, though, if she was only getting detention for sleeping in class, it meant that the staff hadn't caught wind of her humiliating Paulina that morning, which was a good thing, especially since she wasn't looking forward to having her parents lecture her about manners in public and respect towards her peers. Personally, she blamed that lecture on her parents meeting Penny's, but there wasn't much she could do to escape it if they decided to get started anyway.

Mr Lancer was about to continue, but the last school bell interrupted him mid-sentence, earning a delighted cheer from the entire class.

Dani was one of the last out of the classroom due to the others swarming out like staying in the class would be the death of them. Personally, the girl agreed with that sentiment. However, she wasn't the only one in there. As the black-haired teen was making her way out through the door, she bumped into someone with a mop of long blonde hair. "Ow!" Today just really wasn't her day, huh?

"_Ow_," the girl whined, and the instant she spoke, Dani knew who she was — Star Bergen, Paulina Sanchez' best friend. "Watch where you're going, you clumsy witch!" she cried out as the blonde got up, already looking over herself meticulously to ensure that her appearance hadn't been damaged in the slightest. "My nails!" she cried, the shrill sound hurting Dani's ears. "I chipped my nails! If Paulina sees me with chipped nails, she's going to kill me!" she wailed. "I can't see her like this!"

Dani got to her feet, ready and willing to deliver the blond a sharp tongue lashing when she saw the amulet around Bergen's neck glow a sickly toxic green. What was that thing?! The half-ghost girl watched, her mouth gaping wide open as Bergen changed in front of her eyes into a big, scaly dragon just like the one she and Danny had fought that morning. "Oh, dang it," she mumbled, her blue eyes wide in surprise. The younger Fenton twin scrambled out into the corridor, dashing towards her locker down the hall where Danny and Val were standing. "_Dan!_" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "We have a situation!"

Her brother swung around in surprise and astonishment at the use of their code for 'ghost attack', but nothing more had needed to be said, as Dragon-Bergen had broken free of the small classroom's inadequate spacing and into the hallway, where every other student promptly began to scatter. In the chaos, Danny practically flew over to her and they had squeezed into a broom closet to transform.

"We're Going Ghost!"

Phasing out of the closet, the twins surveyed the scene. "That's Star Bergen we have over there," Dani told Danny with a grimace, watching his eyes widen in shock and surprise. "Yeah, that was my reaction too."

Danny shook his head. "Well, let's just roast her first and get her to calm down or something!" Gloved hands blazing with green energy, he took to the air — ceiling, if he was being literal — and fired a barrage of glowing green bolts of energy right into the dragon's gaping maw. Twisting out of the way of a plume of bright green flame, the older Fenton twin headed straight on to hit Dragon-Bergen point-blank.

Not to be outdone, Dani shot after him through the air, throwing blast after black of green ghost plasma at the dragon whenever it was distracted with her brother, flinging the bolts like she was throwing a discus. "Take this!" she shouted enthusiastically, taking the scaly creature's attention off her brother and onto her, only for him to shift it back with a blow to the back of its head.

The twins worked together like clockwork, knowing exactly what the other needed and when they needed it. They zipped through the corridor, hailing down green ectoenergy onto Dragon-Bergen until the creature roared in pain and began to shrink, reptilian features retreating into a human appearance even as Dani delivered one last strike, knocking the girl into a locker.

A bottle of nail polish fell out of some girl's locker as Star Bergen turned back into a human with the amulet she was wearing earlier still around her neck, rolling at her feet. "What happened?" The blonde blinked blearily but brightened up as soon as she saw the polish, picking it up.

Dani and Danny shared a glance as the twins retreated into an empty classroom, turning back to their human forms. Dani straightened her beanie as she walked out into the trashed corridor, meeting up with Penny and Terrence immediately. "That was eventful," the younger Fenton said.

"What happened here?" Mr Lancer shouted down the hall.

"Let's get going," Terrence urged, and without anything more than a collective grunt of agreement, the group of four fled the halls just in time to avoid getting into trouble.

* * *

Penny clicked the link into the website, leaning back in her favourite plush chair as she waited for the page to load — jeez, her Wi-Fi was _slow_. "Let's see... things that can make a teenage girl transform into a dragon," she said, letting her gaze sweep over the minute words on the page. The Asian girl grimaced and reached for her glasses, folded and placed on the desk. "Got it!"

Danny leaned in to see the computer screen, as did Terrence from her other side. The group, sans Dani, who was still in detention and with the Fenton parents, had beelined for Penny's house to try and see if they could find anything at all about how Star Bergen had been transformed into a monstrous dragon creature, as her house was the closest to the school. Of course, if they had had the time, maybe going to Terrence's house would have been the better idea. His Wi-Fi was _way_ faster.

Of course, maybe the connection wouldn't be as slow if Danny hadn't insisted on video-calling his sister and letting her keep up with them on their research, but Penny didn't mind. The more heads they had, the faster they'd find the answer.

_"That's it! Penny, scroll up! It's the golden and green amulet on the left corner, no, the other left,"_ Dani said, the girl pulling her phone closer on the other end.

The Asian girl absently wondered why the younger Fenton was being so relaxed in detention, but she chose to pay it no heed for the time being. "This one?" she asked her friend, clicking in on the image of the ostentatious necklace. "Let's see here... Amulet of Aragon, extreme distress or anger causes the wearer of the amulet to trigger its power and transform them into a dragon," Penny read aloud. "This one, you sure?"

"Hey, Danny, isn't this the thing you gave to Star so she'd go to the dance with you?" Terrence asked, looking back over his shoulder at a suddenly very pale Danny Fenton.

The black-haired teen winced at the statement and nodded — a quick admission of guilt. "It is. I thought it was just something that mum had or it was one of Dani's cosplay jewellery. Figured they wouldn't miss it, but... this isn't good." He shook his head with a scowl. "I'll just get it back from her before the dance. Say, Dani," he said, abruptly changing the subject, "how is Lancer letting you use your phone in detention?"

_"Oh, that's easy,_" the girl said, leaning in conspiratorily._ "I possessed dad and flattered him until he let me off. I think he's insisting that our parents chaperone the school dance now, though."_

"Dani! You know we're not supposed to do that!" Danny hissed quietly at his younger sister, who just shrugged. "Whatever," he said with a groan, holding his head in his hands. "It's not like we're going."

Terrence raised a hand with a sheepish expression on his face. It came as no surprise to Penny that he'd gotten a date — everyone wanted a chance to be the 'best dancer' at every dance since it always came with a pretty good prize by the student committee. "Your cousin asked me," he started. "I wasn't about to let her go on her own!" The defensive tone slipped right past the twins, but Danny seemed more annoyed that his friend hadn't asked him before asking his cousin on what was essentially a date.

Danny huffed and sat back onto Penny's bed. "I'll have to corner Star Bergen when she's alone and tell her that I want the amulet back. It's going to be social suicide, but I guess I don't have a choice." He frowned, pursing his lips together. "That is, _if_ I can get her alone."

_"I can corner her in the bathroom and pull off the same trick I did earlier,"_ Dani offered cheerfully, quickly earning herself a shutdown by Danny.

"No, it's my mess, I'll have to take care of it," the black-haired boy said with a sigh. "But thanks for volunteering anyway, Dani." He groaned. "I'm going to be in so much trouble at school for this one. Never going to live it down, guys, I swear."

Penny laughed at him, swinging her chair around as she put a hand on Danny's shoulder, with Terrence moving onto the bed next to him and copying her. "Don't worry, Dan," she said with a grin. "We're your friends. You'll never have to worry about social issues with us. Ain't that right, Terr?"

"Mhm," the blond confirmed cheerfully. "Couldn't be righter if you were ninety degrees."

The lame pun just earned him a round of boisterous laughter from the group, and Danny ended up wiping a tear from the corner of his eyes — either from the laughter or from a feeling of gratitude towards the group. "Thanks, guys. I'm glad to know I can count on you lot," he said with a chuckle.

* * *

The next day, Danny walked into homeroom, nursing a red cheek and holding an amulet in his hands up to Penny, Terrence and Dani with a thumbs up, smiling despite the pain he was feeling on the left of his face. As he sank into his seat, the black-haired teen shot first his twin, then Terrence and finally Penny, a small, self-satisfied grin and a wink. "Done," he said, leaning forward so that Terrence, in the seat next to him, and Dani and Penny, in the seats to their front, could hear him.

Dani frowned. "She slapped you?" the girl asked, receiving a shrug from her older brother.

"Worth it to get it back," he assured his friends. "And I think I learned something from this whole thing," he confided as Mr Lancer entered the classroom. "It's not worth it to be popular, and the dance just isn't worth it." He paused. "Sorry, Terrence," he added sheepishly.

Terrence slapped him on the back in a friendly manner, flashing him a grin. "Don't worry about it!" he chirped. "I'll show Val a good time and I won't touch her, promise!"

Dani smiled, turning her chair around to face her brother and friends. "You know," she suggested mischievously, "dad's still going to be chaperoning. How about we tag along and cause some mayhem for the A-listers behind the scenes?" She grinned, her blue eyes twinkling as ideas began to swirl in her mind clearly visible to anyone who knew her well. "We can have a good time anyway, you know?"

The older Fenton twin grinned, his blue eyes instantly sharing the same glint. "Yeah," he said. "That'd be nice.

Penny chuckled. "You guys have fun. I'll get you lot some souvenirs from China," she said cheerfully.

"Mr and Miss Fenton, Miss Hadley, Mister Morris, may I have your attention?" Mr Lancer cut in, pinning the quartet with a stern glance.

"Sorry, Mr Lancer," Danny said, sitting straight in his seat with an easy smile. His reputation was ruined for now, but this was high school. His friends always had his back, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all may notice that I did change the ending of the chapter from the original episode. This is because of differences in the two Dannys, one from canon and mine, as well as in the manner the amulet exchange was done. It was a really obvious play to get someone to go with him to a dance with my version of Danny, so he's able to retract the gift fairly 'easily' as well. The quotation marks are there because he did likely get slapped or humiliated in public.


	4. Two Of A Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midterms are coming up, and the Fenton Twins aren't having the best report cards. But while they try to make up extra credit, there's a wrench in the system in the form of a hunter who's looking for new trophies.

"Okay, so what's the function of mitochondria—?" Penny read off her notebook as she ducked a stray cardboard box being thrown at her. "Hey! Boxhead!" she shouted at the blue-skinned ghoul, raising a fist and shaking it at him in annoyance. "I was reading!" She gasped as another box was shot over at her head, only to be shot away by Terrence, who was hoisting a heavy-looking gun. "Thanks, Terr!"

The blond grinned at her, shooting her a thumbs up as he staggered, trying to keep the Fenton Ecto-Gun in his arms despite its weight. "Can't your dad make this thing out of, you know, aluminium alloy or something?" he shouted at the Fenton twins, groaning as the cannon-like gun was dropped onto the wooden pier of the harbour, narrowly avoiding his sneaker-clad feet. "Oh, come on! It took me five minutes to pick that up!"

Dani shrugged as the white-haired ghost girl vaporised another cardboard box that was being shot at her and her friends, dropping in front of the two human teens in order to keep them safe while Terrence struggled to pick up the ectoplasm gun again. "Can you come again, Penny?" she asked, blasting another chain of boxes that the ghost was hurling at them. "Danny, five o'clock, swoop!" she shouted, waving a hand at her brother and then pointing at some stray boxes that she hadn't been able to get rid of in time.

"Got it!" Danny, the faster of the twins, shot at the cardboard boxes, pushing each one out of the way and returning fire at the Box Ghost, as the menace had declared himself. "What was that about mitochondria?" he yelled, looking back at Penny just in time to be hit in the head with a box. "Hey! Terrence, throw me the Thermos!" He swooped down and caught the Fenton Thermos as Terrence threw it, narrowly missing it when the blond misjudged the distance. "Crap!"

Dani dove to save the Thermos, catching the chrome and green item before it crashed onto the ground and inevitably broke, releasing every single ghost that the team of four had worked to catch all night. "Terrence, work on your aim, man!" Cradling the Thermos close to her with a sigh, she turned the containment unit over to the Box Ghost. "Eat Thermos!" she shouted in a good emulation of her father, yanking off the cap and directing the nozzle at the blue-skinned menace. Slamming the cap onto it, the ghost girl huffed as she got back to her feet, dusting off her person. "Jeez!"

"Nice impression of dad," Danny said dryly as both of the twins let the white rings of their transformations pass over them, turning them back to their black-haired, blue-eyed human forms. "I'll finish this tonight. You can get some sleep after last night," he promised his younger twin as he took the Fenton Thermos. "Right, now, Penny, what was that?"

"What's the function of mitochondria in a plant cell?" Penny read, turning a page on her notebook to look at her own notes on the subject. "Let's see..."

"Mito—what?" Dani asked cluelessly, blinking as she stared at her Asian friend. "What's a mito-mitochondria?"

Terrence finally managed to get the heavy gun off the ground. "Oh, come on, Dani, Miss Mary just covered this in biology this morning," the blond pointed out. "It's the factory of the cell, where breathing occurs and energy is produced." Hefting the gun up in his arms, even as his arms were shaking from the strain, Terrence pulled a face that resembled a pained grimace. "Ow, my arms."

Danny just groaned, rubbing at one of his blue eyes. "Dani and I were napping to make up for lost sleep in Biology," he lamented with a frown. "We're spending a lot of time recently with these late-night roundups, you know. Last night, Dani and I had a late-night emergency down in the lab too, so we lost about... half an hour of sleep?"

"One hour," Dani corrected, the girl scratching her head with a grimace. "I conked out in class once my butt was sat on the chair. I hate those slimy little octopi — octopuses... octopodes? Octopodes — I hate those octopodes so much. They keep on slipping out of my hands when I catch them right there!" She buried her face in her hand with a loud groan. "Stupid ghost octopodes."

Danny shrugged, the black-haired boy stifling a yawn as he tucked the Thermos closer to his body. "Yeah, an hour, and we all got back to bed at midnight as it was. Dani conks out pretty hard if she doesn't get her hours in and I'm not much different." He ran a hand through his short hair with a groan. "This is going to be horrible," he grumbled, "at this rate, we're going to both fail our Bio. We can't keep doing these roundup sessions, especially not with the midterms coming up soon."

Penny frowned. "Well, we could try alternating, maybe? You and Dani share most of your classes, and if one of you is out of it for the day, the other can get notes down for the both of you. Terrence and I manage fine as we do now, so we can both come along nightly too."

Dani shook her head. "I dunno, guys. It's alright for a short-term solution, I don't think it's going to be good for us in the long run."

"We can figure something out tomorrow," Terrence offered, hefting the gun up in his arms. "Don't worry, Dannies. We'll get a solution down for you. Now we've got the Biology exam first thing tomorrow and you two need the sleep." He pointed the barrel of the gun in his hands to point at the two half-ghosts, which prompted them to step back nervously before he realised his mistake and lowered the gun. "Sorry."

Danny exhaled slowly. "Yeah... that's a good idea, I think. C'mon, let's get home and get some sleep. It's long overdue."

Unknown to the group of four as they began going their separate ways, there was someone observing them. Neon green metal eyes lit up in glee as a hunter set down his binoculars, a wide, maniacal grin spreading across a metallic, bolted face.

Next targets sighted.

* * *

"How did we get talked into extra credit again?" Dani asked as she and Danny stood in front of the purple-back gorilla exhibit in Amity Park Zoo. The girl adjusted her red beanie and tapped her mechanical pencil on her notepad a few times, staring unblinkingly at the massive ape that was inside the metal bars of the cage, watching it as it did basically nothing else other than lazing about in its cage. Or was it a he? Dani glanced over at the shiny plaque that was beside the cage and read the minute scrawl, scrunching her face up at how hard it was to read — she needed glasses, but heck if she was going to ask for them!

Danny grumbled beside her, his notepad scrawled over with _some_ notes, but not much that was actually useful was on the lined paper, only some random notes that they'd got from the plaque over there and some silly little doodles that he'd made while he was bored of seeing Sampson — the gorilla's name, apparently — scratch its own behind for the fifth time in the hour. It was easy to see that her brother had little patience for this kind of thing, and it wasn't hard to see why he was struggling to keep up with Biology, either. "Not sure," he said with a huff, blowing his black hair out of his eyes. "Terr and Penny decided that making up our lost grades was more important than ghost-hunting with us."

That morning had been a disaster. The Fenton twins had got their last Biology test's results back with big red Ds printed on the top right corners, indicating that, yes, that was yet another failed grade for them and another indication that their grades were indeed suffering for their late-night ghost hunting sessions. When Terrence and Penny had both got relatively stellar grades of an A and a B respectively, they'd decided that it was high time for the twins to shape up.

Which was what had led to where the Fenton duo was now, in front of a stupid monkey's cage and looking at it without seeing anything special in the slightest. Their best friends, on the other hand, had got their equipment and gone out to hunt for the ghosts that plagued Amity Park on their own. Not that Dani doubted their abilities or anything of the sort, but— alright, she totally didn't think that they'd get through the night alright. It wasn't going to be a fun night when all they were reduced to doing was shooting at really nimble and always moving targets, after all.

"This is so useless," the black-haired girl groused, folding her arms over her chest. "It's just a stupid primate. What're we going to learn by writing a report on it — how to scratch our behinds?" _And all because we were up all night before a test too._ Dani felt like burying her face in her hands like she had when she'd got her test paper, but the teen just puffed out her cheeks and sighed. "We've been standing here for hours. It's almost closing time too," she complained. "What've we got for a report? Zilch. Nil. _Nada._ Nothing." She snapped her notebook shut with a ferocity that probably wasn't needed, but the girl was nothing short of annoyed that she'd practically wasted her afternoon.

"This is so awkward. I think the zoo attendant's giving us weird looks too," Danny added with a short groan as he started packing up his things after standing where he was for so long. "We can come back tomorrow, maybe. Maybe we'll have something more interesting to find, then," he said, more willing to cut his losses than Dani herself was, apparently. Suddenly, his eyes widened and he pulled Dani closer. "Am I seeing things, or is that Sam Manson hiding behind the Siberian Tiger exhibit?"

The dark-haired teen cocked her head to a side and peered at the metal cages of the exhibit, peering past the white-coated creature to see the Goth A-lister standing there, hiding in a really conspicuous manner that didn't really do much. They hadn't chosen a good place to hide, all things considered, since she was wearing bright purple and black against the orange and black coats of the felines. "If you're seeing things, then I am too," the younger Fenton replied. "She's not hiding very well, actually, is she?" she asked her brother.

"Not at all. That's why I was asking." Danny blinked at a sudden bout of noise from Sampson and turned around just in time to see something flying at him and Dani. "Move, Dani!" he barked, pulling her out of the way with him. The projectile hit the ground and exploded out into a glowing green net, much to the perplexion of the Fenton twins. "What the—?"

While they were puzzling over the net that had just emerged from apparently nowhere, the purple-back gorilla had apparently got itself free from the metal cage it was closed in, and it burst out with a shriek.

Dani's eyes widened at the sight and she gaped as the gorilla pulled a chrome figure with a flaming green mohawk out from the bushes and began to give it a good beatdown. "Is that a ghost?" she asked, still gobsmacked at the sight, pointing at the chrome person with metal panels screwed in all over the 'skin'. "Or an android...?" her voice trailed up in surprise. "Erm, nevermind, I think. Sampson's doing pretty well, isn't it?"

"I'll say," the older twin agreed before he paused, realising that he'd forgotten something crucial. "Oh dang it. I forgot the extra Thermos in the basement this morning," he said with a groan. "We're going to have to hunt down Terr and Penny to get this one taken care of. I told them that it was a bad idea to have them go ghost-hunting on their own." He hit his forehead with a huff before he turned to Dani. "Go Ghost?"

"Go Ghost," Dani said with a nod. White rings formed at her waist and around Danny's before it split apart in two and proceeded to move over their bodies, transforming them into their ghost form. Thankfully, no one was paying attention, since the zoo attendants were busy with the other exhibits and Manson was fixated with the gorilla-ghost fight. "Heads up, Dan!" the white-haired ghost girl called, swerving out of the way as Sampson threw the chrome-plated ghost over at them. Her fists lit up with ectoplasm as she prepared to deliver another beatdown on the ghost.

Before she could make a move, though, something dropped onto the ground, clinking and drawing attention to it. Dani stared down at the small circular pellet that had rolled at her feet, gasping in surprise when it started spitting out green gas. She covered her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut in case it was toxic or corrosive, raising her hands up to cover her face. Much to her displeasure, when she opened her eyes again, the ghost was gone.

"You alright, Dani?" her brother asked, coughing as he waved a hand in front of his face to wave away any lingering gas. The white-haired ghost boy was scowling too. "Looks like he got away. Let's just get Sampson back in his cage for now," he said with a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he carefully lowered himself back onto the ground. "I hate to admit it, but it's kind of a good thing that he got away," he admitted, still in his ghost form as he walked over to Sampson. "We would have been wasting our time unless we had a Thermos on hand too."

Dani huffed as she flew over to the purple-backed gorilla. "True," she muttered begrudgingly. "And he'd have an idea of how we fought too, so for now, we still have the advantage of surprise. The bad news is that we don't know a thing about him either," she pointed out. She glanced at Sampson and sighed a little — she supposed the ape wasn't _that_ bad if it could give a ghost a good beating. "Come on, boy," she muttered with a frown. "Back in your cage."

The gorilla almost seemed to whine, but Danny shook his head apologetically. "Appreciate the help, Sampson, but you need to go back for now," he told it firmly. "Maybe our report can give you a bigger enclosure?" he suggested almost jokingly with a glance at Dani, who just shook her head. "In you go, boy."

With Sampson back in his cage once again, the Fenton twins returned back to their human forms and picked up their discarded notebooks.

"You don't reckon we can write that Sampson beat up a ghost for us, can we?" Dani asked as she and Danny began walking towards the exit of Amity Park Zoo.

Danny snorted at the suggestion. "In your dreams, Dani."

She sighed. "Worth a try."

* * *

The twins successfully crept back into their room, sneaking around some kind of journalist there to interview their mother for some kind of magazine.

Danny groaned softly as the black-haired teen entered his shared room with his sister, kicking off his sneakers as he headed to the other end of the room from the entrance to dump his bookbag. "Dani, throw me my phone, please?" he asked as he made his way over to the end of their room, covered in posters of planets, stars, and astronauts. No sooner had the words left his mouth did the black-haired boy find himself on the floorboards, weighed down by a metal-chained net that had suddenly been dropped on him and his twin, who had just been behind him.

"Oh for goodness sake," Dani grumbled as she clawed at the net, rubbing at her head, "what is it _now?_" Trying to worm free of the net, the black-haired girl had nearly succeeded when a heavy metal combat boot slammed down on one of the links, inches away from crushing her hand. "Hey!" she hissed, withdrawing almost immediately as her first reaction. She glanced up. "...oh, should've known, huh?"

The older twin joined his sister in looking at the owner of the boot, only to see the same robotic ghost that Sampson the gorilla had just had the pleasure of beating senseless earlier that day — heck, he even still had the dents in his metal exterior to show it. "You!" Danny shouted, gripping the net. "What do you want with us?" His tone, while hard and angry, also held a bit of the same annoyance that had crept into Dani's voice — they'd both wasted an entire afternoon at the zoo and they were no closer to making up for their nearly failing grades for it.

The ghost glared right back with solid neon green eyes, his flaming mohawk growing in size. "You're awfully mouthy for a piece of game," the ghostly android growled in a deep voice. "I hope your heads won't be as chatty once I take them and mount them on my wall!" Producing a large-barrelled gun from who-knows-where, the ghost took aim at Danny's head.

"Dani?" the older twin asked, already halfway into transforming.

"Already beat you to it," his sister answered, the white-haired ghost girl now sinking into the floor, followed quickly by the older of the two, now in his ghost form as well.

They shot back out of the floor and out through the walls of the house, escaping the metal net, but their windows weren't half as fortunate, quickly getting shattered by a shot from the gun. The twins flew up into the air, keeping close together as they got ready to fight, only to be forced to fly apart moments later as the metal ghost flew through the broken window, shooting his gun at them.

"You're just mere prey!" he snarled. "Don't think you can escape the likes of Skulker, the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter!" Skulker shot after them, and though the twins were outflying him at first, he soon caught up, and Danny could see why — his metal boots had warped into rockets, speeding him across through the air to gain distance on the escaping twins.

Danny grimaced as he attempted a manoeuvre to escape the rapidly approaching Skuler, trying to get himself out of the range of the house where either of the Fenton parents could potentially find them and attack them. An idea hit him as he weaved through the rooftops of Amity Park's buildings. _Basement, Dani! We can corner him and force him back into the portal!_ Making a sharp 180-degree turn mid-air, Danny swerved upwards quickly to avoid one of Skulker's thrown nets, leaving it tangled in a tree as he shot back towards his house.

Turning invisible, the Fenton twins phased through the doorway of their house and down into the basement, banking on their prediction and hopes that Skulker could manage to get down into the basement without getting the attention of their parents. A loud crash and the yelling of their father soon proved that the mechanical ghost had indeed failed in the latter task. Danny shot his twin a glance and they both detransformed just in time to witness Skulker burst into the basement door, his flaming green mohawk put out and his metal body dripping with red curry — the same curry their mother had been making for dinner, Danny realised.

Skulker snarled. "I've got you now!" he roared, raising his arm and letting a raygun pop out of the back of his wrist as he pointed it at the twins.

"Not so fast, ghost!" Jack boomed, and a loud, metallic clang was heard as the twins' stocky father bashed the metal hunter in the back of his chrome head with what looked to be a monkey wrench.

Skulker staggered and stumbled down the stair, falling until he had landed in a rather undignified position on the basement floor.

Acting on instinct, Dani grabbed the nearby Thermos that Danny had neglected to grab that morning and pointed it at the hunter. "Gotcha this time!" she cried, a hand on the Thermos cap. "Eat Thermos!"

"You haven't seen the last of me!" Skulker snarled as Dani pulled the cap, and before the swirling vortex could pull him in, he fired a blast at it from his wrist gun, clogging the entrance with some kind of green ectoplasm before the ghost promptly disappeared.

"Aw, dang it," Dani mumbled, disappointed that she hadn't managed to capture the metal pain in the behind, but Jack was pleased enough as their father practically skipped down the stairs, pulling them both into a tight hug. "Dad!" the girl wheezed. "Can't breathe!"

"Sorry, my little ghost hunters!" their father said with a delighted sigh. "Finally, my kids are taking an interest in ghost hunting! Oh, Mads is going to be so happy to hear this!" he gushed.

Despite himself, Danny just smiled and glanced over at Dani, who mirrored his expression. Even if they hadn't caught Skulker this time, seeing their dad this happy was always a plus.

* * *

"So you're saying that this Skulker guy is trying to hunt you two?" Terrence asked as the quartet walked to school, the blond walking with his hands behind his head and his bag slung over his body. He'd been listening to the Fenton twins talk about what had happened the previous day while the boy and Penny had been ghost-hunting in their stead. It had gone somewhat well, at first, he supposed, but without the two half-ghosts with them, efficiency had greatly suffered and neither of the two teens had got away entirely unscathed.

Well, Penny could, if one didn't count loosing about a centimetre off her front bangs, which she normally tied back anyway.

He himself had got few scratches on his left leg while scrambling to pick up the ridiculously heavy ectogun — he knew that it was designed for the twins' father, but goodness gracious, that thing probably weighed a ton or something! It was a miracle that he could pick it up in the first place, especially since he wasn't that blessed in the upper body department. Maybe next time he could try operating the dang thing with his feet? He had some pretty strong quads, after all...

"That's what we said," Dani grumbled, the girl tugging her red beanie down over her hair. "Threw a couple of nets at us yesterday, managed to rig our bedrooms somehow with rope nets triggered by kicking off a blanket and he even tried blasting us in our own house! He wanted to mount our heads on a wall or something like we're a bunch of trophies to a hunter."

"Which he is," Danny added. "Basically we're prize stags and it's open season for deer hunting," he likened, motioning with his hands as he spoke. The black-haired teen shook his head. "That's the closest comparison I can muster right now, and it's looking pretty apt. I'm pretty sure he wants to taxidermy our dead bodies and put us up on a rack to display." The morbid description was accompanied by a full-body shudder from him.

Dani scoffed. "And Mr Lancer wonders why our grades are slipping," she grumbled.

Penny, who had remained almost eerily silent up until now, piped up with a suggestion, "Why not let him come at you, then?" At the confused looks she was getting from the group, the Asian girl proceeded to elaborate. "He's hunting you like a predator does prey, right? If you're the only prey he has, then it'll only be natural that he keeps coming when you continually evade him. He'll finally catch you if he manages to tire you out, too, so your only option is to let him come to you and defeat him then. Lure him to a place where you know you'll have free reign to mess with him and when he comes, boom!" She smacked her balled fist into her open palm. "You've got the jump on him!"

"That's not a bad idea," Dani agreed with a hum and a nod. "If he wants to catch us, we'll let him, and when he gets too close, we'll fight back and then we can go full-on with the beatdown! We can even get Sampson in on it if he likes beating up ghosties so badly!" she suggested enthusiastically. "If we had had the Thermos on hand yesterday, we'd have got an easy catch!"

Danny hefted his bookbag higher up his shoulder as the quartet entered the school. "Hey, speaking of Sampson, how did the big guy get out of his cage in the first place, anyway? I'm glad that he got out in time to save our behinds from Skulker and all, but isn't his enclosure locked from the outside? He might have opposable thumbs, but I sorely doubt that the big guy's got the dexterity to break a lock open from inside the bars."

The group stopped at their lockers in the hallways, with the Fenton twins' lockers placed side-by-side and both Terrence and Penny's beside each other on the opposite side of the hall, each taking their respective books for their first period out.

"Say, isn't the hallway a little too silent today?" Terrence wondered as he shut his locker, his Biology textbook in hand. Even as the blond fidgeted with the lock to shut it entirely, he was peeking both ways down the hall to look at the oddly empty corridor. "Where are the A-listers?" he questioned. "Aren't they usually flooding the halls right about now?"

And it was true — the hallways weren't filled with the A-listers and suck-ups that crowded around said popular kids. A few stray students littered the hallways at their lockers, but the mass conglomeration of students was oddly absent that particular morning.

"Huh, that's odd," Penny said, leaning against her locker and folding her arms over her chest, her Calculus book in hand. "Manson is usually around at this time. Her Goth-wannabe followers aren't present either. Is she absent?"

"Didn't you guys hear?" a passing girl from their class called as she passed with her boyfriend. "Sam Manson got arrested last night for trying to free a gorilla from its exhibit at the Amity Park Zoo. Probably won't have a lasting record considering her parents, but she's in trouble for now."

"Thanks, Sara!" Dani called. She turned back to her brother. "That answers your question. No wonder we saw Manson at the zoo yesterday."

Terrence knew better than to assume Dani was bothered by that. In fact, the smile he was seeing said enough.

* * *

"Is he really going to come?" Dani grumbled from a distance to where Penny was hiding with Terrence behind the bushes. The twins had decided to listen to Penny's suggestion after all and had come to the Zoo with both their friends as backup just in case, all of them equipped either with a Thermos or in Terrence's case, the cumbersome ectogun weapon to take down Skulker. The twins, in their ghost forms to properly draw out the ghost hunter, had insisted on the Zoo for a reason they refused to specify, though Penny had a vague idea as to why, and the twins were right in front of it.

Danny shrugged, the white-haired ghost boy hovering in the air in front of Sampson's caged enclosure with the Fenton Thermos in hand — empty, of course. The quartet had had the misfortune of learning that the Fenton creations, with the strange exception of the ectogun Terrence currently held, were all extremely fragile and tended to malfunction upon dropping. Danny had wondered aloud how his parents had never noticed that, only for his twin to remind him that the Fenton Thermoses had never actually been used until the twins had started ghost-fighting. "Probably. I don't think he'll pass up the chance to catch us if Penny's assessment is correct."

"Let's hope miss psychologist has been brushing up," Dani mumbled, just loud enough for Penny to overhear, accompanied with a sigh. "Wanna play some 'I Spy' before Skulker gets here?"

"I should've brought my game phone," Terrence muttered beside Penny, earning him an annoyed look from the Asian girl. "What?" he whined, a pleading look in his dark blue eyes. "It's been half an hour and the heaping hunk of junk hasn't shown up yet! I'm justified, right, guys?" When neither of the two human teens received a response, the blond dance champion repeated himself. "Right, guys?" Still no response. Terrence frowned as he looked at Penny. "Dannies?"

Penny stood up from her half-seated position behind the bush to peer at their half-ghost friends. "Hush, Terr," she said, her brown gaze raking across the enclosure. "I think Dani just fell asleep. Danny's looking pretty tuckered out himself. I guess they really haven't been sleeping well, huh, Terrence?" she asked, leaning her head on her arms as she looked at her two friends. "Ghost-hunting has probably taken a lot out of them. Maybe we should write them up a schedule after all this so they can actually rest for once."

Her blond friend stood up and looked over as well, taller than the petite Asian girl already despite not yet having hit puberty — he was a late bloomer, Terrence claimed, being probably the only one in their year whose voice had yet to crack. "Aw, that's so cute," he gushed at the sight of Danny letting his sister lean on him as they both started dozing off against the bars of the gorilla's enclosure. "I'll make sure to keep that on the to-do list," he promised Penny. "They take this 'hero' thing way too seriously. No wonder their grades are slipping." He noted it down in his phone's memo pad. "Let's talk to Jazz tomorrow, actually. Maybe they need the tuition too."

The Asian girl hummed in agreement just as Sampson began to make a general ruckus inside his cage, banging on the metal bars and startling the Fenton twins awake. "He's here! Hide!" she hissed, ducking back under the cover of the bush to grab the Fenton Thermos given to her in case Danny dropped and broke his.

The blond joined her, and they peered through the bush, brushing aside leaves to watch as the white-haired twins prepared themselves for a fight, though Danny's hands rested on the enclosure's lock for an oddly long period of time. Terrence managed to heft the ectogun up enough to aim at the twins' general area so he could get a shot in if the twins needed help. "I see him!" Terrence called to her in a hushed voice, preparing to fire the gun.

"Hey, not yet," the girl chided her friend as she watched the half-ghost twins evade and zip around Skulker as the metal ghost appeared, trying to catch them with various traps and weapons. She was glad that the twins were as flexible as they were, or else it would have been very hard indeed to get themselves past several of the more precariously placed traps. "Okay, get a lock on him — Danny and Dani have him distracted and—"

"Fire in the hole!" Terrence cheered, despite it being the wrong expression, as he let loose a barrage of plasma bolts from the ectogun, successfully pummelling the robotic ghost hunter with them without Skulker dodging it, as the ghost had his back to the bushes. "These bushes are thick, man," he commented, firing at Skulker as the ghostly hunter tried to evade the blasts that were chipping away at his metal body.

"Argh! You annoyances won't stop me from capturing my prey!" Skulker roared, turning around to fire a blast of ectoenergy from a ray gun he had mounted upon his wrist. The green blast shot right into the bushes, thankfully not hitting either of the teens, but it did manage to hit the broad side of the gun, sending it out of Terrence and Penny's grasp.

Another blast followed, and the two human teens scrambled out of the way and towards the gun, hoping to reach it. Penny was the relative closest to the weapon, but even if she did manage to reach it, she was nowhere near as physically strong as Terrence was, even if she was the better athlete.

"Hey, ugly! Pick on someone your own size!" Danny shouted from behind Skulker, pelting him with bolts of green energy as the hunter tried to eliminate Terrence and Penny from the picture. "Leave them out of this — it's us you want!" Neon green eyes bright as he blasted away, the older of the Fenton Twins went full offensive, taking all the attention away from his sister as she flew up behind Skulker to deliver an ectoenergy-enhanced right hook to the back of his chrome head, leaving a dent.

Dani grimaced and flexed her fingers, but she didn't look perturbed. "Come and get us, punk try-hard!" she shouted, shooting past the hunter to appear at Danny's side. She made the universal 'come and get me' motion with her right hand, and with Danny beside her, the twins phased through the bars of Sampson's enclosure.

"You think these bars will stop me?" Skulker roared, phasing in after them to stand menacingly in front of the twins, towering over them by a good head.

"Nope, but Sampson will," Dani answered with a cheeky grin.

"Now, boy!" Danny called with a whistle, and both the Fenton twins flew back to land on the floor of Sampson's enclosure, just as a purple and black blur shot out to football tackle Skulker to the ground. The white-haired teen turned away with a grimace as the gorilla soundly delivered the ghost a beatdown, though Dani was actively cheering for the ape with a whoop.

Penny finally clawed herself to her feet with Terrence's help and both looked over at the enclosure, wincing occasionally in unison as Sampson delivered another solid punch to Skulker's metal body. "Ooh, that's going to leave a mark," she mumbled to the blond, who had managed to roll the practically impervious gun back towards the bushes.

"You're talking, sister," Terrence agreed with a grimace as Sampson gave the robotic ghost one last hard punch, smashing the hunter's head right through and pulling back with... a green blob-like thing in the gorilla's fist? "Is that really him?"

"Apparently so," Danny said, unscrewing the Fenton Thermos to capture Skulker's true form. "Looks like he really was compensating for something."

Penny snorted at the statement. "Right... remind me to remind you about brushing up on your humour."

"So... we still have nothing for our Biology extra-credit report, and it's due tomorrow," Dani pointed out as she turned back into her human form, walking over to the gorilla to give it a pat on the back for its help. "Thanks for the help, Sampson, but we still don't have much to write about you." Her shoulders slumped as she sighed, obviously frustrated with everything that had gone on to waste their time. She paused. "Dan...? You might want to pass the Thermos to someone and come look at this," she said.

"What?" the older twin asked, transforming back too and handing the Thermos to Terrence. "...oh... oh! How did no one find this out before this?"

Penny raised a brow. "What's all the commotion about?" she asked, swiping the Thermos from Terrence before the blond could drop up while he struggled with the gun.

"Let's just say Sampson should be called 'Deliah'," the twins chorused in unison.


	5. Attack of the Killer Garage Sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Danny landed in week-long detention, Dani's just been invited to the party of the year. While she tries to fit in with the popular crowd, Terrence has to deal with some problems of his own pertaining to her new attitude.

"I can't believe old man Lancer only raised your Biology grades to a C!" Terrence complained as he walked with Danny over to their lockers, both freshly having come out of Biology for their last class. The younger Fenton and Penny had excused themselves to wait for Valerie, who had wanted some time for girl talk with the duo. The group had agreed to meet up at their usual spot outside the school later on. "I mean, that discovery launched both of you Dannies onto the cover of _Genius Magazine_. There's a Genius there for a reason!" The blond flailed his arms to make a point.

Danny laughed weakly as he packed his books into his bag, shaking his head. "At least we're passing the class this time," the black-haired teen remarked with a sigh as he shut his locker and proceeded to lock it tight. "My parents are still going to be on my case about that, but at least we're not going to be grounded for the rest of the semester. That'd be the real problem."

Terrence snorted as he turned towards the half-ghost teen. "Uh-huh, and detention isn't going to be a problem for you now?"

The other teen groaned, leaning his weight against the metal locker and burying his face in his hands. Slowly, he nodded, though the action just shoved his face more into his hands, making it hard to confirm whether he was just trying to avoid the topic or if he was agreeing with the blond's statement. "Yeah... I'm done for," he groaned, his voice muffled. "Maybe I should've gone to bed earlier yesterday, but that report wasn't going to write itself! Dani already did most of the work for me anyway, might as well have got it done while it was 'early'."

The blond eyed his good friend then shook his head. "Priorities, man," he chastised. "Learn them. That week's worth of detention was so not worth finishing that book report that you could have totally finished once you got to school this morning. English Lit wasn't until after recess, anyway, and you could have totally multitasked during lunch period anyway." Terrence reached over and patted Danny on the shoulder. "Anyway, enough about detention. You said your dad invented something new? And something about a ghost?"

The black-haired teen huffed as he pushed away from the locker, heading towards the exit of the school. "Yeah. A vacuum or something he called the Fenton Ghost Weasel, I think. He managed to clog it up with papers and the Thermos. Dani and I tried to get the Thermos loose because we needed it later for our nightly hunt, but when we put it into reverse, it spewed the Thermos out and opened the Ghost Portal. Dani and I ended up letting out a new ghost, and, uh..." He averted his gaze, and Terrence could immediately get that the other boy was hiding something that he was embarrassed about.

"And...?" the blond prompted, walking along with him as they got to the school gates. "What did you two do, Dannies?"

The black-haired teenager just groaned again, shifting to brace his bag against his shoulder. "We... may or may not have implanted the idea of world domination into his head...?" he offered up, a sheepish tone creeping into his voice. "Totally by accident, I swear! He looked like the mad scientist type and I slipped up by mentioning Doctor Doof from Stacy's area and he just got it into his head!" He ran a hand through his already messy hair. "I'm such a screw-up."

Terrence just nodded sagely. "That you are, but I'm no saint myself. No judgement, I promise," the blond said, wrapping an arm around his shorter friend with a faint smile. "But you're totally paying for our next Nasty Burger lunch on Sunday."

The black-haired boy chortled, nudging the blond in his side. "Dream on, Terr," he teased. "You know I'm short on allowance this month as it is. Anniversary month coming up soon, remember? Dani and I are pooling for a real gift this year instead of those cheesy little handmade presents we used to craft since we were kids. I know it's the thought that counts, but they deserve it." He sighed, stopping at the gates as the two teenagers waited for their girl counterparts to arrive along. "But anyway, dad's Weasel works, sort of, and I was wondering if maybe we could take a look at that and see if we can use it for our hunting nights next time."

"Sounds great, if the vacuum works like you said it does," Terrence agreed. "I'm not lugging around a second ecto-gun if it's as big as that cannon, though. My arms are sore enough as it is from yesterday night." He grimaced a little as he flexed his arms, eyeing his wimpy forearms with trepidation. "At least I'm going to be building some muscle tone, yeah?"

"You, muscled? That'll be the day, Terrence," Dani called with a laugh as she ran over to meet them, Penny hot on her heels while Jazz and Valerie were walking rather calmly and conversing enthusiastically. "You look best like you are now. Did you guys hear, by the way? About the party being thrown by the jock team this weekend?"

The boys shared a glance. "A party by the jocks?" Danny asked warily. "You don't mean—"

"Foley is throwing the year's biggest bash at his place," Penny supplied helpfully, the Asian girl's hands on her hips. "And I already know that you hate him too much to agree to go — not that he'd even invite any of us." She rolled her eyes, wincing at Dani's elbow. "Hey, that's the truth, you know!"

"If you want to go to Tucker's party, maybe I could get him to extend a few invites," Jazz offered as the genius redhead approached with Valerie. "He came over to us at lunch asking if Val and I would attend. I told him I'd consider it."

The African-American girl beside her just jutted a hip out, her hand braced on it as she smiled at her cousins. "No way I'm going anywhere like a party without both of my favourite cousins with me," she told the Fenton twins, earning her a warm smile from both the black-haired teens. "Besides, the jock crowd isn't really my thing. At least the Goths and cheerleaders don't find fart jokes and wedgies funny."

Danny was the first to speak up about Jazz's offer. "No, Jazz, really, you don't have to do that for us. It's fine, I promise—"

"You'd really do that?" Dani cut in, her blue eyes wide and sparkling.

Jazz just smiled. "I'll tell him tomorrow?"

Dani tackled the redhead in a hug, squealing, "I love you so much, Jazz!"

Her brother didn't miss Terrence's disapproving expression nor the darkening of deep blue eyes as the blond turned away and continued walking, not listening to Dani's excited and enthusiastic squeals of delight.

* * *

"Yes!" Dani squealed as she dashed into the Nasty Burger, and Penny, who was looking for all the world like she didn't want to be where she was at the moment — that was to say, behind the very, very enthused Dani Fenton — was reluctantly following the smaller of the two black-haired girls. "She did it! She did it! Jazz got me and Penny the invites!" she cheered loudly as she sped over to the table where Terrence was seated with Valerie, both of them glancing at Terrence's phone. She waved an innocuous-looking slip of shiny paper in front of them, beaming widely.

_"Dani, can't this wait for tomorrow?" _Danny's voice came from the phone, where Terrence had him on a video call. The older of the Fenton twins tried to glare at her from his phone screen, but his attention was diverted between writing a paper that was on his desk and looking down at his phone in his other hand. _"Or at least until I'm back at home and not stuck at school doing this stupid make-up paper for Mr Lancer?"_

"Nope!" the black-haired girl cheered with a gleeful laugh. "I'm not gonna keep silent! Best day ever!" With another gleeful squeal, the younger of the Fenton twins dropped right into the seat beside her cousin, leaning over the table to look into Terrence's phone and beam at him. "Cloud nine doesn't even begin to describe my glee right now!" Tightly clasping the glossy paper of the printed invite to her chest, the crushing schoolgirl swooned dramatically. "And you should have been there when Tucker gave me the invite! The in-crowd noticed me!"

She was so enraptured in her squeals that she didn't even notice her older brother's frown from the screen of his phone, nor the worried looks from Penny and Terrence as the Asian girl took a seat beside the younger Fenton girl. There was a clear sigh from the phone's speakers.

_"As long as you remember that you need to go and hunt down that Technus guy before he does something bad to the rest of the city thanks to that 'suggestion' we gave him this morning, Dani,"_ Danny said with a sigh. _"I can't do it this time since I'm stuck here, but you're free, so it's up to you now. Dani? Did you hear me, Dani?" _An exasperated sigh left him as he turned his questions to the others present. _"She's in her dreams again, isn't she?"_

Valerie leaned in, humming in confirmation. "Uh-huh. Want me to snap her outta it?" the girl asked.

A quiet, muffled smack could be heard as Danny appeared to introduce his forehead to the wooden surface of the desk. _"Yes, please, Val. Thank you so much, cous. I'm glad you're around,"_ he muttered. _"Reign her in for me, please, and just make sure she doesn't do anything too stupid?"_ The boy sounded pleading even if Penny couldn't see him. _"I don't want her to do something stupid just because she wants to fit in... it's always been stronger of a desire for her than me."_

"Well, she's more of a butterfly than you are," Penny muttered, stealing a glance the still dreaming girl. "She likes being in the spotlight. You act so awkwardly when all the focus is on you. Remember your kindergarten poetry recital?"

Valerie just snickered enthusiastically at the memory, her green eyes twinkling in mirth while Terrence looked rather lost about the incident mentioned, for Penny was offering no additional explanation.

_"I remember. Don't need to remind me." _Danny groaned. _"Thank you so much, Penny dear." _Sarcasm was positively dripping from his tone.

Penny just snickered in amusement. "Not in the future, Dan," she said with a cheerful smile. "Enjoy the rest of your detention week, okay? We'll keep an eye for little miss Starry Eyes over here.

_"Where would I be without you guys?"_

"Lost and stuck dealing with your parents and sibling on your own, no doubt," Terrence jabbed with a grin, catching up with his composure without missing a beat. "See ya at school tomorrow, man, and charge your phone tonight. Don't forget!"

Danny just laughed. _"Yeah, yeah, Terr. Bye, guys." _And with that, the older of the Fenton twins ended the video call.

"So..." Penny said as she leaned forward on the table, eyeing the younger twin who was currently staring dreamily out the window of the fast-food joint, probably fantasising about the A-lister party. "How bad is this going to be?"

Valerie waved a hand in front of Dani's blue eyes, which were clouded over in her dreaming state. "Hmm," the African-American girl observed, her full lips pursing together. "Very bad, that's how," she noted, leaning back in her seat. "Ah, jeez! It's been months since I've last been around my cousins for any extended period of time, but ooh, Dani's got it _bad._ Foley ain't that bad looking if you overlook that lanky physique of his, but _dang girl_, he's not that handsome!"

Terrence scoffed almost condescendingly as the blond leaned back in his seat, pocketing his phone. "Oh, you think?" he muttered, making a gesture, though he was sure to not smack into his soda and spill it. "That's what I keep saying to Danny about Manson, for goodness' sake, and I _know_ you've said the same about Foley to Dani, Penny." Irritably, he growled. "The worst thing is they've decided that it's fine for them to hate the other's crush, but it's also perfectly fine to keep on liking their own crush." With a roll of his eyes, Terrence picked up his soda and drained the cup with a sigh.

The green-eyed teen raised a brow. "We'll have to settle that score sometime soon, but for now, let's just make sure Dani doesn't make any trouble, I guess."

Penny exhaled as she leaned back in her seat, folding her arms over her chest. "Sure, sure," she said with a sigh. "I hope that she doesn't do anything she regrets."

* * *

"You're having a _what_?" Terrence and Penny chorused together as they stared at Dani while Valerie was busy checking out something the younger Fenton had laid out for her garage sale. The two teens couldn't believe what they had just heard from the enthused girl. "Did you clear this with Danny?" Terrence asked, the blond looking to his right where a table was laid out filled with some of Danny's beloved rocket models. He winced immediately when he saw the

The blue-eyed girl waved a hand in the air rather flippantly. "What? Nah!" she said, leaning forward and propping her elbows up on the main table in front of the Fenton's conspicuous house. "I'm sure he won't mind, though. These are all the old ones he had displayed on the bottom of his closet anyway and I've been meaning to clear out some space for his new ones!" Dani grinned at them. "I don't figure that you guys would like them, but if you're interested, I can set a low price for you guys?"

Penny shook her head, a grimace on her face as she glanced over at her left, where a table full of shiny chrome lab equipment was laid. "Isn't that your dad's inventions?" she asked incredulously, her brown eyes wide. A brand new vacuum-looking appliance sat on that table among some of the more tarnished metal inventions. "Dani! You know how much your father loves his things, this is being inconsiderate!"

Terrence took a glance at the vacuum and recognition sparked in his eyes when he saw it. _The Ghost Weasel! _he realised. Okay, now Dani was probably going a _little_ too far in her endeavour to fit in with the in-crowd, if putting Danny's favourite rocket models on sale wasn't counting as sufficiently crossing the line as it was. Still.._._ the blond frowned, pursing his lips together even as Penny leaned forward, trying to reason with the younger Fenton twin, _it's always best to let her learn that lesson herself, I guess. It'll be in her best interest._ He sighed, trying to convince himself that that was the case, even if it made her suffer a little before she learnt her lesson.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Penny sigh and pull back from talking with Dani. The Asian girl folded her arms over her chest, her brow pinched together as she frowned at Dani. "Fine, fine, if you won't listen to reason, then are you at least coming with us to school to get your brother when he's finally let out of detention... and maybe tell him about what you're doing at the same time? We're heading over to Terr's for movies later, Val and Jazz included."

"Sorry," Dani sang rather enthusiastically, beaming at them as she braced her chin against her palm, smiling dreamily. "I'm almost there when it comes to raising enough money to buy a new hip outfit!" She straightened out and clapped her hands enthusiastically, grinning at them. "The party is going to be so fun!" she squealed.

Terrence and Penny shared a look. "Right," the blond said slowly. "I guess that's a no, then. Alright." He shrugged a little, the gesture going unnoticed by Dani but completely picked up by Penny and Valerie, who had elected to pick up every single one of Danny's rocket models — there were _quite _a few, if he had to mention specifics, around twelve — and take them off Dani's hands, almost without thinking about it. "Well, let's get going." Terrence checked his phone. "Danny's detention is supposed to end soon. We'll see you sometime later, Dani, I... guess?" Waving absently at the black-haired girl, the blond teen began walking away.

Penny and Valerie quickly caught up with him, the latter balancing the twelve models in her arms with some difficulty. "So, Val," Penny said, glancing over at Valerie, who was on Terrence's other side, "are Danny's models really that great?" She eyed the old models that the girl was holding, reaching over to take four of them off her hands and make it easier for the African-American girl, who grinned at her.

"What? These old things?" The green-eyed girl laughed, shaking her head. "They're really not worth the twelve dollars Dani charged, but I know that Dan loves his models and these were his first. Even if I don't like 'em, he treasures them like they're worth more than 24-carat gold and wouldn't appreciate it if his sister just happened to sell them all, y'know?" She grinned.

Terrence smiled at the teen, taking another four off Valerie's hands so that each of the three teens was holding four models. "You're a great friend and cousin," the boy said to the dark-skinned girl. "Danny sure is lucky. I didn't even think about getting them so he wouldn't blow a fuse over that later." Keeping the models well balanced, the blond shook his head, sighing.

"What was with the mood, though, Terr?" Penny asked as they walked down the corner to get to Casper High. "You know, you're not usually this touchy when it comes to talking with someone, even if they're making ridiculous choices."

The blond frowned. "Well..."

"Guys, hey! Thanks for meeting me— are those my rocket models?" Danny exclaimed, his blue eyes wide and aghast as the black-haired teen stared at the trio. "They're supposed to be at the bottom of my closet! Why do you guys have them?"

"It's a long story, Dan," Valerie said sympathetically. "A long story."

* * *

"My sister did _what?!"_ Danny almost shouted as quartet walked on from the school gates towards the neighbourhood where Terrence's home was located. The black-haired boy had loaded all his models into his book bag and was carrying his books, with Terrence making some effort to help, even if both the boys struggled a little, though surprisingly it was not as much as they would have prior to the Ghost Portal incident. The blue-eyed teen grit his teeth together to stop himself from making another outburst even as Valerie patted his back in a manner that seemed to be comforting.

His cousin only shot him a sympathetic look as she shook her head, the African American girl making a motion that seemed to translate into 'what can you do?'. "She did, Dan, as unfortunate as it is. Just be glad I saved your models first, mhm?"

Danny scowled. "Never let anyone say that I don't love Dani to death, but she's going too far, _way_ too far! The Ghost Weasel was only finished up this week!" He would have thrown his arms up into the air is he wasn't carrying enough books for the entire week — okay, so maybe he needed to do some sorting of his books when he got home. His books were _heavy_ — but it just so happened that he was, so the boy had to settle for gripping the too-heavy books like he wanted to break them in half. "She's in so much trouble for this."

"Wait, but you two are twins," Penny pointed out, a dark brow raising as the Asian girl just snatched Danny's books form him with a soft grunt. "Can you think about packing your books according to your class schedule, Danny?" she whined, still easily hefting the books after she got used to the sudden heaviness. "No wonder your shoulders hurt so back every week!" Now with her hands full, she couldn't reach out and poke his head at this point, which Danny was suddenly very very glad for.

"I know, I know," the black-haired boy said, raising his hands in an attempt to placate her. "Terr, a little help here?" he asked pleadingly at the blond, who just snickered as the quartet slowed down to a stop in front of a gated community at the edge of Amity Park's normal housing area to search for something in his pockets.

Valerie stared, her green eyes wide. "Terrence, you _live_ here?" she asked, her jaw-dropping. "Dad said that this place is expensive as _heck _and dang opulent to boot. What do your parents _do?_"

The blond dug around in his pockets and found a keycard, which he gave to the security guard outside before the man let them in. "My 'rents? Investors, last I checked," Terrence said absently, taking the keycard back from the guard with a 'thank you'. "They're kind of whimsical with how they spend their money, but they know quality when they see it." He sighed a little. "Valerie, I know that look. What's my last name again?"

The African-American girl blinked. "Morris. Why... _oh. That_ Morris family, the one who kickstarted an entire economy over overpriced sashimi at a sushi restaurant?" she repeated almost disbelievingly. "Remind me again why that happened?"

Penny shook her head. "That was Terr's uncle, I think, was it?"

"His parents are the ones keeping the Manson cellophane-swirling deli toothpick thing in business," Danny helpfully supplied as they reached Terrence's house, a surprisingly sedate-looking mansion that was almost missable in the multitude of others in the area, well, as sedate as a three-storey mansion could be. "Close your mouth, Val, flies are going to get in," he teased his cousin with a faint smile. He didn't blame his cousin for that look on her face, though. He'd been stunned, as had Penny when they'd first found out. As hard as it was to say it, this was the only secret he could recall ever keeping from Dani.

It had been an accident, as far as he could recall. Dani was running late because she had forgotten something _really_ important and had insisted that he and Penny hurry on to school first, they had arrived at their usual meeting spot with Terrence to find him on the phone with his parents, arguing over something that sounded rather important. It had left the blond in near tears — one of the rare times where Danny had seen his usually composed friend in a nervous breakdown. Apparently, his parents were threatening to withdraw him from Casper High because he wasn't making any 'headway', whatever that had meant.

"Oh, wow," Valerie breathed in awe as she looked around as Terrence opened the front door for them. "Jeez! You could totally be at the top of the school's food chain if you showed a hint of all this, even just one per cent! You could be top dog!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms out wide to emphasize the extravagantly decorated living room. Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, she recoiled from the harsh glare that the blond was giving her. "Whoa, why so touchy?"

"Because that's exactly what I don't want," Terrence grumbled as he plopped into the sofa opposite a television set so large it took up half of the wall behind it. "I've had enough of that in freaking _elementary_. I _begged_ my folks to transfer me for a reason, dang it!" He ran his hands through his short blond hair. "Look, Valerie, I don't say anything about my family for a reason," he started, voice softening as he looked at her. "I don't want people to look at me because I'm rich. Penny and the Dannies, none of them knew heck about me when we became friends, and I really just liked it that way."

Danny took a seat beside Terrence as the blond huffed, the half-ghost boy reaching over to pat him on the back. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Terr," he grumbled in a lighthearted manner. "I like to think I know enough about my non-blood-related best friends."

"That was then," the blond grumbled back. "My family has a tradition. We're packaged off alone once we're teens and expected to earn some kind of 'investment' back by the time we're sixteen." He scoffed, putting his head in his hands. "But that's beyond the point. Anyway, I know what Dani's getting herself into. The 'popular kid'life is _terrible_. It's empty, shallow and really, _really_ vapid. That was what I was trying to get away from in the first place when I begged my folks to transfer me, but the only good thing about it is that I'm out of the shark-fest that's the A-listers and officially a nerd."

Penny beamed at him as she sat down on the sofa's armrest beside him and wrapped an arm around the boys. "Aww, really? The good thing isn't you meeting us?" She grinned at him playfully.

Terrence laughed dryly. "Yeah, yeah..."

Danny chuckled, but he paused as a cold wisp of air left his mouth, thankfully going unnoticed by Valerie. "Guys, I have a ghost problem rampaging nearby," he whispered, leaning in towards Terrence and Penny. "Movie night is going to have to wait, so I have fly." Making a quick and hasty excuse, the black-haired boy dashed out the open door, though not before putting his bag down carefully. Once he was beyond Valerie's line of sight, he took another look around and transformed into his ghost form once the coast was clear.

The white-haired ghost boy took to the skies in a glide that was well-practised after his late-night ghost hunts, his fists bright with green ectoplasm. "I'm coming, ghost-face!"

* * *

Dani was having the worst day of her life.

First, both Penny and Jazz had stood her up for the party, the former claiming that she had prior plans and never had intentions to attend Tucker's bash at all, and the latter excused herself with a thinly-veiled disappointed glance in her direction, saying that she needed to do her homework. The fact that both her best gal pals had practically deserted her with a look in their eyes that all-but-said they weren't happy with her had nearly crashed her day before it started.

Nearly.

When she had gotten to the party in a brand new outfit— all sequins and glitter — she'd been rather unfortunately met with an odd sight of everyone in the popular kid group wearing clothes that were more or less what she and her closest gang wore on a daily basis. Tucker and Dash were even wearing exact imitations of her older brother's favourite 'Japan flag' shirt, baggy jeans and red sneakers combo, much to her puzzlement. So, overdressed and very much lost, she'd gotten the rather rude informing that the dress code had been changed to 'loser chic' because no one could afford anything glitzy and new after the garage sale she'd held earlier on that day.

Then, later on, when she'd tried to enter a conversation held between a few cheerleaders, she'd found herself entirely lost as they cheerfully spoke without bothering to talk to her at all. She hadn't even been able to find a common topic to squeal over — they hated her favourite animes and comics and were busier over gossiping about the Goths than anything else. It had been the same thing with the jocks, who cared more about who scored what in their last game.

To add insult to injury, she had tried to call Penny — or Terrence, who was the only one of her usual gang who was reliably with his phone — and had gone straight to voicemail, even when she knew all of them had her number and always picked up, no matter how late. Terrence's voicemail had even left with an insult, telling her quite point-blank not to call him again if she 'was Dani and still at that stupid party of yours'. She didn't know what to do. Even Danny hadn't picked up his phone since that morning, though he was perhaps more excusable in that he was still at school.

However, that didn't make her situation any less frustrating.

Making things even worse was her discovery of the haunted tech she'd ended up selling most of the popular kids to fund her new outfit, all of which they had brought together to Tucker's place to show off, from the Fenton Ghost Weasel her father had exaggeratedly displayed to her that week to old versions of the Fenton Thermos and failed mini-Portals. It had been a very nasty shock in her system when she saw the junk melding together and fusing wires to create a huge, hulking mecha, with that blasted Technus or something at the giant robot's head, cackling madly.

The white-haired ghost girl worried her lower lip as she confronted the overshadowed hunk of metal in Tucker's front yard, her hands blazing brightly with ghostly energy as she tried to figure out how she could eliminate him before any of the A-listers took notice. Her brow pinched together as Technus wandered closer to a power line, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling at the thought of the mad scientist being given access to more power. "Don't you dare get any closer!" she yelled, blasting him. It barely left a dent in his mechanical armour. "I'm not going to give you any chances to empower yourself!"

"Huh? Get me stronger?" Technus puzzled out. Then, he seemed to realise what she was talking about and proceeded with a mad cackle. "Ahah! Thank you, ghost girl, for giving this lovely idea to me!" Reaching out one of his metal arms to the cable, he paused before he pointed his other at her. "But as you know, as a supervillain trying to take over the world, I really cannot afford to have a superhero like you playing along to disrupt my evil plans! Say _au revoir_ for now, girl!" he pronounced in his nasal voice.

The Fenton Ghost Weasel appeared on his free arm, the vacuum head pointed straight at her as he turned it on... only for the thing to jam near instantly.

"Really? Jammed-up again?" Technus exclaimed. "Well then, I suppose that I should just take care of you the old fashioned way!" Even as he drew more power from the cable, he shifted the metal components of his arm into a cannon Dani could vaguely recall resembling the one wielded by the Teen Titan Cyborg. "Taste the power of my sonic cannon!"

The high-pitched whirring of the cannon charging up caught Dani by surprise as she tried to figure out how to stop him, making her swerve drastically to avoid getting caught in the path of the bright green beam. _That was close, too close,_ Dani thought to herself with a grimace on her face as she glanced back to where the beam had torn through, only narrowly missing her because she had moved out of its path in the nick of time. She was lucky she remained uninjured after that attack.

"Dani, heads up!" A blast of bright green ectoenergy shot through the air to hit Technus' head part, stunning the mad scientist ghost for a moment and enough to let the older of the Fenton Twins appear on the scene with his fists blazing. Danny shot up next to his sister, reaching a hand out to her. "You alright?"

The girl grimaced. "I'm fine, Dan," she said, shaking her head. "Do you have the Thermos on hand?" she asked hopefully, looking up at him. The containment unit would end this battle quite fast if they could just uncap it.

He blanched. "I left it at Terrence's. Dang it. New plan." He fumbled in the pockets of his black pants before he pulled out a phone and tossed it to her with a steady hand, nearly overestimating her reach and causing her to fumble with it for a moment or two. "Call Terr! Ask him to get the Thermos to us in five minutes. I'll hold off Tecnus until then!" Without waiting for her to say anything, or to give her a chance to say that their blond friend was not on speaking terms with her, Danny charged at Technus.

"Wait! Dan, dang it!" Dani cursed, turning the phone on and dialling Terrence's mobile number, looking worriedly after her brother just in case he needed help to take down the blasted ghost. As a precaution, she kept the phone away from the ghost's sight before he got the bright idea to incorporate it into his systems as well. With a defeated sigh, she called Terrence.

_"Danny?"_ Terrence asked, his voice a little distant, suggesting he was on speakerphone. _"What's the sich?"_

"It's not Danny, Terrence," Dani said, following hurriedly up with a cry of 'Don't hang up!' as the blond told Penny to hang up the call on their end. "Terrence, _please._ I don't know why you're so angry with me, but just hear me out. Danny's fighting Technus right now and unless we can knock him out cold, we have no way of defeating him for long enough that we'll be able to send him back to the Ghost Zone. I'm not asking this for my sake right now — please help me by bringing the Thermos to me. I can't let Danny get hurt."

Terrence was silent on the other end as a rummaging sound was heard through the speakers of _Danny's_ phone. _"Dani, look, you have to understand this,"_ the blond said on the other end, _"Danny is always going to love you to death. He'll do just about anything for you and he'll do it without asking you to do anything for him in return. He'll do that because you're his sister __— his only sister, the one who knows everything he goes through and more. You will always have that family bond."  
_

_"But that's not the case with us, Dani," _Penny said over the phone. _"We're your friends. We don't have that family obligation to always be at your side. Friends will come and go, Dani, and unlike family, where you'll learn from your mistakes because they'll tell you, it'll be just too easy to get your friends to hate you, and when that happens, they won't say a word about it."_

"That's just the problem! I don't know what's wrong!" Dani nearly shouted into the receiver, frustration in her tone. "Why are you so angry with me? What did I do wrong?"

_"You thought it was a good idea to go to that party, Dani, and, well, that I won't blame you for, but what you did afterwards that hurt. You don't know how much it hurt to have another friend just push you aside for popularity, Dani!" _Terrence hissed through the phone.

"Another... Terrence, I..." Dani paused, pressing her lips together. "Terrence, I had no idea that I was blowing you guys off so much. I was just so caught up in the excitement and... I'm sorry, Terrence. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, you'd better be!" Terrence yelled as both he and Penny raced up, the former lugging the hefty Fenton Ecto-gun while Penny had the Fenton Thermos on hand. "Danny, clear a path! I'll try and land a hit on his head for you guys so Penny can suck him up!"

The white-haired ghost boy flashed them a thumbs-up as Dani flew over to join him, and the twins alternated between blasts of green energy to distract Technus' attention away from Terrence as the blond set up the cannon's blast. "Nice to have you with us, guys!" Danny shouted as he flew above Technus, ignoring a brief barb by the mad scientist.

"Fire in the hole!" Terrence yelled as soon as he had a clear path, the green blast of ectoenergy shooting through the air to impact Technus straight in the head, stunning the ghost and his mecha suit enough for Penny to uncap the Thermos and suck him up in a whirlwind.

The Asian girl screwed the cap shut and gave it a shake for good measure. "Gotcha!" With a grin, she handed the Thermos over to Dani as the girl flew down with her brother.

"Thanks, guys," Dani said softly. "And... I think I've learnt my lesson. I don't think I fit with these guys, actually... you're my friends, and that's never going to change."

Terrence grinned at her as he leaned on the cannon, and Danny pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Glad to have you back."


	6. What You Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wish-granting ghost Desiree comes to town, and when Tucker Foley makes a wish, it leads to chaos. However, can the Fenton twins take advantage of this to gain themselves not one, but two new allies?

"Heads up, Dani!"

Dani ducked under a metal frame used to hold up the stall of the seasonal — and very witchy — marketplace, forgetting for a minute about her intangibility powers, still trying to check her surroundings for the blobs of ectoplasmic goop that had escaped the Fenton Ghost Portal that morning. She nearly ran right into a faux spider web, and immediately turned intangible and shot through it, shuddering at the large, fake, fuzzy spiders that were pasted on the string that made up the fake web.

Ugh, she hated the witch market.

"I've got a lock on it!" she exclaimed as she shot forward, seeing her brother chase up behind her as he went over the tent itself. Her hands blazed green with the ghostly blasts the twins had learnt to get under control over the past few weeks since first discovering it, and she took aim, pulling her fist back as if she would be throwing a punch, and she threw the punch, firing the shot at the green blob. "Gotcha!"

The _thing_ — not even those ghost octopodes — just freaking _bleeped_ like it was some sort of android and shot off, narrowly missing her shot and making her huff. "What is that thing, even?"

Danny shook his head, slowing down as he tried to track and predict where the creature was going. "I don't know," he said, narrowing his neon green eyes. "Either way though, we need to get it into the Thermos and back into the Ghost Zone. I don't know what it even wants or why it's doing this, but we better start catching up! Penny, Terrence, you two see it anywhere?" he asked into his ear-piece.

Somewhere along the line, Terrence had gotten all four of them Bluetooth ear-pieces for easy communication, and they'd used it every single night, and sometimes in the day too. Thankfully, the battery life for the devices was great, so they didn't have to worry about losing contact with their friends after a long day.

_"Nope, I can't find it on the targeting system of the cannon," _Terrence said back, _"it's moving too fast to be picked up, Dannies. You two have got to step up your game and start moving faster."_

_"The tracker thingamajig isn't picking it up either," _Penny added, _"so I second Terr's statement. You gotta go fast for this one."_

"Alright," Dani said with a nod. "I got it. I mean, we got it," she corrected herself, looking over at her twin. "C' mon Dan, let's go!" She squinted as she looked down at the black-themed marketplace, and her eyes lit up when she saw the flash of green ducking into another stall. "Found 'im! Let's go!" She back-pedalled a few more metres before shooting forward to get to the creature. "Don't you dare run from me this time!" As the white-haired girl flew into the marketplace, she turned herself invisible and intangible to not alarm people, slowing down to track the motion of the creature.

On her chase, she passed by a young redheaded girl begging an older, white-haired woman for something. "— please, gran? I want some peanut-butter cookies!"

"Gran's sorry, Em, but your momma said no," the grandmother said gently. "You're allergic, remember?"

Em stamped her foot impatiently. "I wish I could have some!" she shouted, about to pitch a fit, and that was all Dani heard before she found the green blob again and shot after it once more.

"Hey, ghostie!" Dani yelled, charging up both hands with the green plasmablasts. She unloaded them onto the creature, managing to corral it into staying in place, just long enough for Danny to catch up to her and uncap the Fenton Thermos, sucking up the blob-like spectre in a swirling vortex before he hastily slammed the cap right back on. "Hah! Take that!" the white-haired girl exclaimed, sticking out her tongue at her brother — or rather, the ghost held inside of the Fenton Thermos he was holding. "Not _that_ fast now are you?" She harrumphed, victorious.

The older Fenton twin just laughed, shaking his head at his sister as he handed her the Thermos. "How about you release it back into the Zone this time, Dani?" he teased with a chuckle. "Seeing as you're so pumped about catching it and all."

Dani was about to retort when a scream was heard, and the ghost twins snapped their heads over in the direction of the shriek. They glanced at each other, sharing an unspoken sentiment that needed no words. _Go?_

_Go._

The twins shot through the air, flying back the way they came, just in time for them to find a giant, still-growing pile of cookies in the middle of the road, stacking higher and higher until it was almost as tall as a two-storey building. People were being buried under it, but what caught Dani's eyes was the sight of the redhead kid from earlier — the one allergic to peanut butter — trying to claw her way up to the surface, and her skin already going red and breaking out. _I'll save the people, you deal with the source,_ she immediately thought to her brother as she shot down to save the girl.

As she shot down, intangible, into the growing pile of cookies, she caught sight of her brother exchanging blasts with a black-haired, green-skinned ghost woman. The ghost girl pushed from below, her hands going tangible as she pushed the redhead out of the allergen pile, quickly sweeping her up — she was about five and was really petite — and carrying her over to the white-haired grandmother that was standing anxiously at the edge of the growing pile to see where her granddaughter was. "You need an Epipen," she told the woman as she laid the girl on the ground. "I gotta go."

"Thank you, young lady!" the woman called as she flew off, and Dani could see her inject the girl with the Epipen as she continued to pick people out of the growing cookie pile. She got the last of them out and immediately shot up into the air to help Danny with the ghost woman. "Dan!" she called out. "Heads up!" She blasted two shots of energy through the air, heading towards Danny's head, but her twin listened just in the nick of time to duck his head and let the blasts hit the ghost's stomach.

"Nice one, Dani!" the older twin called in praise, turning around and giving her a thumbs up. "Now, let's show her what's... huh?" Danny turned his head back, realising that the ghost had vanished while he wasn't looking, much to his frustration. "Oh no."

The phantom duo glanced at each other, looking down and realising that the giant pile of cookies was shrinking back down to normal. "Let's get out of here before anyone else sees us," Dani suggested, and Danny nodded in agreement. The twins flew away, turning invisible as they headed back to where Penny and Terrence were. "By the way, who was that lady?"

"Some kind of genie ghost," Danny said as they landed and turned back to normal. "Or at least, that's what I figured. She said something like 'your wish is my command'. Either way, we need to be on the lookout for another runaway ghostie."

Dani just sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Just when we thought it was over."

"It never is, Dani. It never is."

* * *

It was a few days later when Danny was attempting to clear a path by wedging his way through the crowd to get to where Dani, Penny and Valerie were sitting. By the time he arrived at the bleachers where all three of his closest female friends were seated — and yes, two of those three were related to him, no surprise there — the game was already in full swing, and Casper High Ravens were losing, very badly, if the older Fenton twin had anything to say about it.

"Where's Terrence?" he asked as he sat in between Penny and Dani, Valerie on Dani's other side as the African-American teen cheered on the Ravens. Danny looked, and the Ravens slowly began to regain ground by scoring another point. "I thought he was free today."

Penny shook her head. "The team mascot tapped out today because he went down with some kind of virus that's been floating around. He sits next to Manson in Chemistry, and she's been out for at least a week. Terrence got roped into doing it," she explained. "Apparently he knows the cheer coach personally and she convinced him to do this as a favour or something."

Danny cringed at the idea of being out in the heat inside the black and fuzzy Casper Ravens costume. He was just thankful that he hadn't been pulled into it by Terrence, even if Terrence wouldn't ever do it to his friends. "I've never seen the school play such a bad game every since Foley took over as tactics," he commented, watching as Kwan Lee lost the ball to the opposing team. "I can practically see him frothing at the mouth in anger already."

"This is just like the game that semi-permanently benched Baxter," Dani observed. She squinted at the field, narrowing her eyes. "Wait, Dan, do you—" She stopped as a wisp of cold air left both her and Danny's mouths at the same time, thankfully going unnoticed by Valerie. "I need to go to the bathroom, Penny, can you hold my seat?" she called as she stood up, carefully watching her words and trying to make her sound as normal as she could.

The Asian girl nodded, giving her a thumbs-up as Dani jogged out of the bleachers. "Hey Danny, you want to go and check up on Terrence and bring him some water?" she suggested purposefully.

The quartet was almost an expert at this point at making up excuses and it showed whenever they were forced to make lies for themselves and others. Danny had felt awful about it at first, but he'd stopped caring when he realised that if he couldn't get away, he'd be in trouble and the ghosts would keep on doing what they were doing. It was a necessary evil.

"Yeah, sure," he said, standing up and running a hand through his black hair. "Dani's got some iced tea in the Thermos, right? I'm sure she wouldn't mind me taking some and giving part of it to Terrence." He took the Fenton Thermos when Penny tossed it at him, shooting her a friendly glare. "Penny, come on, you know I'm a lousy catch," he said jokingly, even as the girl grinned at him and gave him a thumbs up. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

He'd barely gotten to the back of the bleachers when he heard an earth-shaking roar, and immediately, he transformed into his ghost form as the white rings passed over him. Turning invisible and intangible, he shot through the bleachers with the Fenton Thermos in hand and saw what was causing the commotion, much to his alarm.

One of the players from the Ravens had turned into a massive, Hulk-like creature, torn pants and all, and was rampaging through the field, though the helmet and facepaint were still on his head. The opposing team's players had scattered in an attempt to get away, and the monster charged straight to the end and tossed the ball down onto the field with a roar.

Out of the corner of Danny's eyes, he saw his sister briefly flicker into visibility, and he knew where she was. _Dani, I think that ghost is Lee,_ he told his sister as he flew closer to the field, still invisible and intangible. _Or rather, I think that ghost is **inside** Lee._

_Yeah, you're right, _Dani said in return. _I also think that this might be the work of that ghost genie you were fighting earlier. Think I might be onto something?_

_I think you're right. Here's the game plan _ _— I'll hold him, you reach inside and grab the ghost. Ready? Go!_

Danny dashed around to behind the monster and revoked his intangibility, using the superior strength he had in his ghost form to grab onto the creature's arms and hold him there. It was still a struggle, though, as while Lee was just an overshadowed human, he was still being empowered by a ghost. He exerted as much strength as he could to hold the fullback in place as Dani reached in, creating a small distortion in the light as she yanked out a green, blob-like ghost from the boy's chest. Immediately, Danny was just holding an unconscious Kwan Lee, who he quickly and unceremoniously dropped him to the floor as he grabbed the Fenton Thermos.

_Hold it still,_ he said as he uncapped the Thermos, watching as the green vortex sucked up the blob ghost. _Good grief. That's two in one week!_ he exclaimed as he capped the Fenton Thermos. _Who gets this back to the Zone?_

_I'll do it,_ Dani volunteered, and after a few moments of nothing, he felt a pull on the Thermos, and he let it go. _You keep an eye on Terrence and make sure that he doesn't get wailed on if the Ravens lose the game. And keep an eye out for the Goths potentially coming after the Jocks too, by the way. I hear from Jazz that it's getting out of hand._

Danny nodded, before realising that they were still invisible and she couldn't see him. _Right, got it. I'll see you in a while, Dani. Be careful, and if there's another ghost, call me,_ he reminded firmly. _Don't go off on your own. I know you're still trying to make up for the Technus thing, but you can't be too careful._

_I know, I know._ Dani's smile was audible even if he couldn't see her. _I will. Don't let Val get suspicious now, yeah Dan? I'm gonna go now; see you later!_

Danny returned the farewell and flew over to the side of the bleachers again as the players were recovering from the event. He took the chance as he passed through a crowd to reverse his transformation — which surprisingly went unnoticed — and he walked over to the black mascot as half-time was called. "Yo, Terr!" he called, getting his blond friend's attention, and making the raven-costumed teen look over at him, and the half-ghost teen stifled a smirk of amusement at his friend's condition.

Terrence was huffing and red-faced from the heat, and the all-black costume wasn't helping at all. "Hey Dan," he grumbled. "What was going on the field?"

Danny had brought an actual thermos of cold water with him, and he handed it to his friend, helping him partially out of his costume so the slippery vinyl of the costume didn't make it slip out of Terrence's hand. "A ghost overshadowed Lee," he said with a frown. "Dani thinks it might be the same one we were dealing with earlier this week. We haven't found her yet either, which just makes things worse."

Terrence gladly gulped the cold water down before returning the now empty thermos to Danny. "Thanks, man," he said with a relieved sigh. "Colleen owes me for this. Now, about that ghost genie. Do you need Penny and me to join you guys on a new hunt?" he asked. "Tonight's a Friday, so we can stay out later than usual and it'll... probably be just fine. Well, I think."

Danny frowned for a moment. "Well, we could, but the thing is that Dani and I don't even know where she is and what she can do. If we're rushing in there blind, we might be getting into more trouble, and you know how Dad and Mom have started going on patrols at night." His voice had dropped significantly at that. "I don't want to get caught. They'll _freak_."

The blond frowned, his brow furrowing. "Okay, let's meet up at my place after the game and we can talk about what we can do," he suggested. "The break's almost over. I should get back to work. See you then, Dan!" With a wave, the boy quickly put on the rest of his costume, much to his visible displeasure, and hurried back towards the cheerleaders, who were gossiping eagerly with each other about something or the other.

"See you then, Terr!" Returning the wave, Danny made his way back to the stands, feeling his phone buzz. He glanced at the text he'd just received. "Dad and Mom are working on some kind of Ghost Catcher, like a dream catcher," he read off the message from his twin. He sighed. "Right..." _We'll talk about that later with the gang. Meet-up at Terr's place later after the game._

A few moments later, Dani responded. _Yeah, okay. On my way back now. See you in a few._

* * *

"How could all of you lose like that?!" Tucker shouted at the Casper High Ravens as the team shrunk back, physically afraid of the nerdy teen despite being much stronger than he was, pacing back and forth in front of the team. He stopped, glaring at the team of jocks, knowing that the football coach trusted him enough to take his word for which players to bench. That was how he'd gotten Dash side-lined for the better half of the season, after all, and none of the football players wanted the same fate to befall them.

"You've never lost since I've given you tactics; Kwan, you're slacking off!" he shouted, going off on the Asian quarterback, his hands wringing in the air in frustration as he tried to properly articulate his fury towards the bigger teen. "Okay, that's it! All of you aren't going to go anywhere after this failure of a game anyway. Stay here and think about what you did wrong, and meet me back here tomorrow after school, because you're going to practice like no tomorrow!" In fury, he turned around and stormed out, stomping his way out of the locker room.

"How could they possibly lose?!" the African-American teen fumed as he stormed down the hallway to grab his things. "Ohh, I bet Manson bribed Kwan into losing the game, just so she could make me look bad," he griped angrily. Sam and he had been best friends in kindergarten, but as the years passed, they had simply drifted apart. The Goth had grown more vindictive over the years as well and Tucker had lost count of the number of times she's tried to undercut him since they had entered high school. "That's exactly the kind of thing that witch would do, and Kwan likes her enough to do what she wants. Ugh! I wish I could take her down!"

_"Your wish is my command!"_

"Tucker, wait! Please, it was a bad game! It's not going to happen again!" Kwan suddenly yelled as the jock ran into the hallway after him, just in time to witness it as Tucker began to swell up in size physically until he was a literal Hulk, green skin and all. "Tucker!" the Asian boy shouted, looking aghast as the A-lister-turned monster roared and charged out of the school with only one target in mind. Kwan had gone pale when Tucker broke out of the room, standing at the entrance of the school hall as the main door entrance was ripped to shreds by the massive form of the Ravens' tactician.

Samantha Manson was going down. Way down.

* * *

"Okay, so what's this Desiree's deal?" Dani complained as she and her twin flew through the air, invisible, on their usual patrol. Usually, they'd be with Penny and Terrence, but the former had come down with the same virus that Manson had, and the latter had 'an important meeting with the 'rent's to make', so both were unavailable for patrol that night, much to the younger twin's chagrin. "Why's she doing all this?" They'd just barely made the connection after a long discussion. Dani had heard the redhead with peanut allergies say 'I wish', and Terrence, on the field, had heard Kwan shout in frustration that 'he wished he could demolish the other team'. "Why'd she grant these wishes in this way?"

Danny was thoughtful as the two phantoms soared across the starry night sky of Amity Park, relishing in the cool breeze. "Maybe it's a limit of her powers?" he suggested. "Despite being powerful enough to make all sorts of things happen, it's possible she, like that genie from Aladdin, is compelled to grant all wishes made to her and to get some control over it, she twists the wishes?" The white-haired boy frowned as he turned mid-air, continuing to fly in reverse so he could keep facing his sister. "It's no excuse, but that might be something."

"Aw, I don't know," the younger of the Fenton twins said with a groan. "But all I know is that we need to stop her before she does something like grant people superpowers!"

"Speaking of superpowers, I think we have a super_villain_!" Danny exclaimed, seeing something big and, more importantly, _green_, come stomping down the street, followed closely by a boy in a letterman jacket that the older twin vaguely recognised as Kwan Lee. The white-haired half-ghost took another look, and he recognised torn cargo pants and yellow sweater sleeves. The real giveaway, though, was the stretched out red beret on the behemoth's head. "That's Foley!" he exclaimed.

"Tucker Foley? And that's Lee right behind him!" Dani exclaimed in realisation. "Let's get him out of here and make sure Foley doesn't kill anyone! I'll distract Foley — I'm more agile. You need to talk Lee into getting out of here and drag him away if he won't listen!" And with that, she flew off in the direction of Monster Foley, her hands blazing with green fire. She might have had a crush on Tucker, but she knew that he was just a jerk. Besides, he was going to terrorise the town, and she couldn't let him do that.

Meanwhile, Danny shot down to Kwan and made himself visible to Casper High's star quarterback. "Lee," he called, getting the boy's attention. "Look, I'll make it brief. Don't ask about how I know your name — that's not important. Your friend isn't himself right now. What I need you to do is get out of here immediately and stop anyone from getting here, because things are going to get ugly. Do you know where he's heading?"

Kwan just looked to be in awe at Danny's appearance. Despite being taller than the half-ghost teen, the white hair and glowing green eyes were also accompanied by the fact that he was hovering in midair, giving him an otherworldly appearance, to say the least. The quarterback shook his head, blinking. "He's, um, Tucker's heading to Manson!" he blurted out, looking somewhat terrified now that he'd blurted it out. The Asian boy had just gone pale and for good reason. "Please, don't hurt him," he added hastily. "I know it looks bad, but I swear, Tucker isn't usually like this!"

Danny felt somewhat sympathetic to the boy's plight — if one of his friends was in this situation, he wouldn't want them to be hurt either — but he had a job to do, self-appointed or not. "Kwan," he said to get the boy's attention — boy did it feel strange to be calling him by his first name — "I want you to listen to me. I can't promise that I won't hurt him. It might be the only way to get him back to normal. But I can promise that I'll stop him from doing something he'll regret when he's back to normal. For now, I want you to listen to my advice and get the heck out of here before it's too late. Got it?" Danny turned around, ready to go after the behemoth to help his twin

The boy nodded. "I got it. And, um, h-hold on!" he called as Danny began to move off. "Who are you?"

Danny looked back, smoothing his white hair back as it got into his eyes. His glowing eyes darted around as he tried to think up an alias, and then it struck him.

_Phantom_, Dani echoed in his head as he came to a decision. _A bit tacky, but I like it._

"Phantom," Danny said, looking down at Kwan as he took off higher into the air. "The name's Phantom; Danny Phantom. Or at least one of them, at least." With a grin down at the jock, he turned and flew off to help Dani, his hands blazing green as he caught up to his sister. "Hey ugly!" he shouted out, blasting Monster Foley in the back of the head. "Hands off my sister, you green... thing... that just ruined the flow of the insult..." He shook his head. "Nevermind, you idiot," he said to himself. Narrowing bright green eyes, he shot off again.

Dani, true to her word, was easily darting and weaving through Monster Foley's swipes and grabs, turning intangible at just the right moments to get out of his grip. "Ugh, I wish he would just freeze!" she cursed in frustration, not realising that she'd said the dreaded two words. No sooner did she say the words, did the white-haired ghost girl hear the voice of a woman.

_"Your wish is my command!"_

Monster Foley turned blue, a dark cloud forming over his head and hailing down snowflakes, which, as soon as they touched the green skin, formed ice crystals that slowly began to grow, until the entire body of the possessed boy was just a hunk of ice that was frozen to the pavement.

_Desiree has got to be near! _Danny figured through their mental link. _In that case, then I hope this works!_ "I wish you would show yourself to us and not do anything to disadvantage us!" he wished, loud and clear, trying to cover as many of their bases as possible to ensure the wish didn't backfire on them. It earned him a scream of frustration as a pink mist formed in front of them, coalescing into the green-skinned ghost woman with black hair that he'd fought earlier in the week.

"You've learnt the trick," Desiree said sourly, glaring at Danny through red eyes.

Dani held up both of her hands in a sign of peace. "Look, Desiree," she started slowly. "We don't want any trouble. We just want to make sure that things don't go awry here. Why are you doing this?" I'm sure we can come to an agreement here." This was the first time that the twins had really had to talk things out, surprisingly enough. The Lunch Lady was impossible to talk down. Skulker had tried to kill them. Technus, well, he just got too much into the supervillain idea. But Desiree, right now, was open for them to have a conversation with.

"I don't have a choice," Desiree said plainly. "All ghosts have an obsession. Mine is with granting wishes but at my own expense. And before you ask, I can't pick and choose either. It's a limit of my powers." Her red eyes seemed to soften a little as her shoulders slumped. "Look," she said with a tired sigh. "You've figured out the trick to gain an advantage over me. Just wish me back into the Ghost Zone and we're done."

_Not until we get Foley back to normal,_ Danny thought to Dani.

_Yeah... and I... also really want to know why she's like this,_ the younger twin admitted. _Every other enemy we've fought so far has just continued to fight us even as we fought back. She's just... given up like that. That's really strange._ "I wish you would share with us why you're like this, Desiree."

The pink mist took hold of her, and the wishing ghost had only time to shoot Dani an annoyed look before she began to speak. "When I was alive... or rather when the one who created me was alive, she was a harem girl in Ancient Arabia. She was beautiful, the most gorgeous girl in all of the harem and she had the sultan's favour. Eventually, his jealous wife found out and banished her from the kingdom. She died at a ripe old age, but of a broken heart and with plenty of resentment. That resentment mixed with the ectoplasm of the ghost zone and thus I was formed, cursed with making all wishes I heard come true at my own expense for over a millennium."

_Oh goodness... that's sad,_ Dani thought sympathetically and looked over at her brother. _Dan... I'm not sure I want to kick her butt back into the Ghost Zone now. She's already practically given up anyway, and you know what mum said when she made us have some karate classes. We're here to defend the city, not bully our opponents._

_It's not like we can do anything about it,_ Danny retorted, but his furrowed brow and otherwise audible silence said otherwise. He was looking at Desiree with a focused and intense expression, which was visibly startling the genie ghost. _Or... can we? I have a plan, Dani. If we play this right, we can help her, get the ghost out of Foley, and make sure that Amity Park has one less danger to contend with!_ His green eyes lit up with his plan, and he spoke, "Desiree, I wish you'd grant us three wishes without consequence, not including this one. First, we wish Tucker Foley was back to normal. Second, we wish that you wouldn't terrorise Amity Park anymore."

"Third," Dani said, knowing where her brother was going with this, "we wish that you could choose which wishes you grant."

"Your wishes are my... command...?" Desiree began to say before the realisation of the last wish caught up to her. But before she could do anything, her powers kicked into effect as she cast her pink-tinged magic. A blast of energy surrounded Monster Foley, shrinking him back to normal size and defrosting him. Two more tendrils of pink surrounded Desiree herself before wrapping her in a cocoon that vanished into thin air. "Children... why did you...?" the ghost woman was speechless.

"We might be enemies," Dani said, "but our mother always said that to kick people when they're down is to bully them. We've got that enough in our own lives, so we don't want to do that to you either."

Danny nodded. "Sorry about the extra caveat, but I couldn't be too careful," he apologised. "Now you're free to go back to the Ghost Zone if you want to, and you're free of having to grant every single wish people say. This way, we won't have to fight you in the future." He offered her a small smile.

The ghost woman cried out, not in anguish, but in thinly-veiled glee, and swooped in towards the two teens, wrapping them in a tight hug of gratitude. "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!" she cried out, much to their surprise. "I owe you so much, children! I swear to you, I will do my best to return here and aid you in the future." With a gleeful smile, Desiree finally released the two dazed Phantom twins, and leaned in, kissing both of them on the top of their heads in a matronly way. "Thank you," she said again, her voice warm. "And take care." Snapping her fingers, she vanished in a swirl of pink mist.

Still dazed, the Phantom twins lowered themselves to the ground, and they stared at each other blankly for a few moments.

"That... was unexpected," Danny commented, looking at Dani, "but I'm glad that happened. I guess that's one more crisis averted, huh?"

Dani nodded. "Come on, let's go and get Tucker to Lee," she suggested, heading over to the African-American boy's side. With some effort, the girl picked up the unconscious boy with her supernatural strength and took to the air alongside the older of the twins. They flew only shortly before Dani was waved down by her brother to see Kwan Lee looking up in awe at them. She slowly descended until her feet touched the ground, and moved to let the quarterback take Foley in his arms. "Your pal's going to be alright," she told him.

Danny nodded, still hovering a metre or so above the ground. "He might not remember anything for the past few hours, but he'll be okay," he added. "It's late. Be careful." He had no idea why he said that, but it sounded right, in some capacity, even if the quarterback was part of the group making his life miserable. "C'mon, let's go!" he called to Dani, and with her rising up next to him, the Phantom twins immediately flew off into the night sky, their job done for the night.

* * *

The next morning, when the Fenton twins walked down the steps for breakfast, they were both in a very good mood.

"Looks like everything turned out alright, last night," Danny said with a smile to his sister, handing her backpack to her after she finished tying her ponytail. "No one got hurt, we helped someone, plus we found a snazzy new name for the two of us."

Dani laughed. "Snazzy, huh? Nope. That was stupid, Dan, but I like it, I guess. We should tell Penny and Terr about it later in school." She grinned, tugging on her red beret over her head with one hand. "I hope Kwan didn't notice anything, though," she said, mildly concerned.

"He's a jock," the older twin dismissed. "He might have noticed something, but we're not as noticeable as for him to learn who we are... right?" He smiled uneasily as they reached the front door. "Hey mum, dad, we're going off to school!" he shouted, getting an affirmative from their parents in the kitchen. Opening the front door, Danny picked up the newspaper for the day from the front steps and put it on the table next to the sofa, not reading the headlines.

If he or Dani had, he would have noticed the cover photo depicted two shadowed figures with light hair and blazing green eyes, and a large headline saying, _Amity Park's Heroes: Friend or Foe? Mysterious duo saves fourteen from certain death by burial, including an elementary schooler. Local football star says they're the heroes we need._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The change from the original episode came in the middle of my rewrite of the chapter. I had initially planned for the episode to go similarly to the original, but I figured that here would be a place to start making larger changes, especially in preparation for episode twenty in the future. Desiree's changed role here is because she only really has an important role in two episodes out of the three seasons, so I figured that there was no reason to keep her as an enemy after this anyway.


	7. Bitter Reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the Phantoms get dragged along to their parents' twentieth college reunion, they meet the multibillionaire Vlad Masters, who seems to also be hiding a dark secret for them. Can they resist his offers, or will he be swayed by them instead?

"Crap, crap, crap, curfew, curfew, curfew!" the Phantom twins exclaimed in unison as they shot through Amity Park's night sky after a long night of ghost-fighting — mostly the formless ghostly blobs or the ectopodes that would mindlessly attack anything that got too close to it. They'd just parted ways with Penny and Terrence a few minutes earlier, but their two friends didn't have a curfew.

Jack and Maddie Fenton had taken note of their twin children's late returns in the recent weeks, and to try and curb whatever behaviour they were afraid the two were engaging in. It was a sweet gesture, but it only hindered the Phantom twins in their nightly patrols. Unfortunately, the curfew was still new, and both the twins still weren't used to it in the slightest, which resulted in them overrunning their curfew multiple times since it was implemented, which had the result of their parents threatening to deprive them of certain privileges they had.

Unfortunately, it seemed as if the twins weren't going to be able to meet curfew that night either.

"Hey, you youngsters!"

Danny stopped abruptly, making Dani, who was just a little bit slower than him, crash right into him from the beck, sending both of the white-haired ghost teens barrelling forward through the air until they recalled their flight, and slowed them down before they slammed right into a building that was right in their path. "Dani!" the older of the twins sputtered. "Why'd you do that? I stopped!"

"Yeah, and evidently, you weren't stopping fast enough," his sister shot right back. "Now who was that?" She looked around until an identical wisp of mist escaped their mouths at the same time, alerting them to the presence of new ghosts. Dani immediately turned around, her mismatched gloves blazing with green energy as the younger of the Phantom twins faced the unknown ghosts that were calling to them. She frowned when she saw the trio of green ghost vultures that were flying towards them, but then took note of a scrap of paper one of them was holding. What was that?

The one in the lead squawked when the vultures got close enough and huffed like it was tired. "Finally!" it scolded the twins angrily. "You whippersnappers, always rushing, rushing, rushing! You don't know how to stop and enjoy the world!" it ranted on, and descended into a quick rant, causing the twins to glance at each other quizzically. "Anyway... where was I?" the old bird croaked. "Right. I was wondering if you two youngsters would be able to give us a point in the right direction. We're looking for this guy—" the vulture shooed the one wearing sunglasses up and made the second one show the twins the photograph it was holding.

Danny took the photo from the vulture and looked at it, Dani zipping over to look over his shoulder. The photograph was torn on one end, looking to have been ripped from a complete photo, so it only showed a headshot of a man... a very familiar-looking man. He was heavy-set, with a square chin, and black hair in a very eighties-era mullet. "Is that...?" he trailed off, looking at his sister.

_Dad?_ both twins chorused in unison over their psychic link.

Thinking quickly, Danny folded the picture up. "Sorry," he lied through his teeth. "Don't know who this is." He could feel Dani reaching behind him to grab the Fenton Thermos hooked to his side. Danny watched the vultures quickly argue amongst themselves about the virtues of wasting their time by stopping to ask for directions, giving them long enough for Dani to take the Fenton Thermos in her hands.

"Eat Thermos, you buzzards!" she cried out, uncapping the containment device.

"We're _vultures_, you bra—!" The vultures didn't get a chance to finish their sentence before they were sucked up.

Dani capped the Thermos again and gave it a good shake just for good measure before she high-fived her brother with a grin. "Come on, Dan," she said, hooking the Thermos to her instead. "Let's head home. It's..." Her green eyes widened.

"Oh crap, our curfew!" both twins exclaimed aloud as they shot back to the FentonWorks building.

"Why did they have a picture of Dad anyway?" Dani asked as the Phantom twins flew back to the building, reaching their window in record time. She hefted open the window from the outside — they'd left a ruler there because their window couldn't be opened otherwise — and jumped in, turning back to her human form.

"Heck if I know, Dani," the older twin said as he got in, removing their ruler and closing the window behind him. He reverted to his human form and held out the photograph. "But whatever it is, it can't be good." Danny had just enough time to put the photograph down before the door to their room was opened, and their parents walked in, both looking irritated. The teen paled a bit, as did his sister. "Uh, hey... mum, dad, we're here?" he said with a weak grin.

"Don't give me that, Daniel Jack Fenton!" Maddie Fenton scolded. "Your father and I checked your room at ten exactly, and now it's fifteen past ten! Climbing in through the window doesn't mean that you're on time! And you, Danielle Madeline Fenton! Out so late with your brother — I thought you would have at least been able to inherit my common sense, young lady! You're both grounded for a week! No electronics, no friends over, no going out!"

"And just to make sure you don't cheat this grounding, you're coming with us, no electronics, for our twentieth college reunion!" Jack Fenton exclaimed, holding out a green and gold invitation into the twins' faces. _Wisconsin State University College Reunion of '84!_ the invite practically exclaimed in gaudy golden lettering. "We're heading over to our old college buddy Vlad's place for the weekend, and you two are coming with us, no 'if's and no 'but's about it!"

Danny glanced over at his sister, their blue eyes meeting. _Crap._

* * *

Dani was seated in the back of the Fenton RV — a chrome and green RV with 'FENTON' printed on the outside in large, flashy letters — with Danny next to her, the twins discussing what could be going on, though their discussion hadn't given them any possible leads. The girl huffed, finally shaking her head. "Okay, I give up," she mumbled, staring out the window. "What're we going to do for this weekend, anyway?"

Danny frowned, leaning back in his seat and looking up at the ceiling of the RV. "I don't know. This Vlad Masters guy is a billionaire or something," something Terrence had mentioned before in passing when talking about the world's richest people — his parents were just out of the top fifty, along with the Manson family — "and he used to be interested in ghosts too." The older twin frowned. "Dad and mum never mentioned their prototype to us until last night."

The girl frowned, matching her brother's expression. "Well, are you surprised?" she asked, her red beanie sliding down over her eyes. "It's gotta be an old shame of theirs. I mean, they gave their bestie ghost acne, gave him premature white hair, hospitalised him for years and almost thoroughly ruined his life. They haven't spoken face-to-face in years and have barely called. Of course, they don't want to talk about it."

Danny shrugged. "I don't know, Dani... this isn't giving me good vibes at all... I feel like something is going to go wrong here."

"Tell me about it, Dan. I'm uneasy about this too." Dani looked up at her brother, frowning.

Before Danny could say anything, their father shouted from the front, "Kids, get ready! We're here! Get down from the RV — we're going to greet your Uncle Vlad!" He sounded genuinely enthusiastic as the vehicle abruptly jerked to a stop as the heavyset man stomped down on the brake pedal, nearly sending Dani shooting forward if Danny, who was wearing a seatbelt, hadn't grabbed her shoulder. Let it never be said that Jack Fenton was a good driver — because he wasn't, and if the twins' memory of their mother sending them to kindergarten was reliable, Maddie Fenton was terrifying on the roads too.

"We'll talk about this later," Danny promised his sister, cringing as they finally stopped moving forward. "That must've left a mark on the pavement. I hope Mr Masters doesn't mind." He grimaced as he finally stood up, letting his sister go, only for him to yelp and stumble forward as the RV jerked another inch forward. "Gah!" This time, Dani held him back from smacking his head on the table in front of them. "Thanks, Dani."

"No problem. Let's go and meet Mr Masters," Dani remarked, adjusting her red beanie as the twins made their way off the RV and up to the front door of the mansion. Dani's jaw dropped at the sight, her blue eyes wide in surprise. "Multi-billionaire is right. This isn't a mansion, this is a _castle!_" she exclaimed in as hushed a whisper as she could to her twin. "Mr Masters is _loaded_, dang!"

An amused chuckle could be heard, and the younger Fenton twin immediately flushed bright red at being caught. A man clad in a smart suit, with white hair tied back into a low ponytail, was standing at the front door, an amused smile on his face. "It's simply smart investing and business practices, young lady," he dismissed with a smile that looked somewhat forced. "Your parents know exactly what I mean, I do believe." His smile turned a bit more sincere. "Jack, Maddie, it's so good to see you two again. It's been twenty years." He held out his arms for a warm greeting, but the massive form of Jack Fenton barrelled forward, sweeping him up into a bone-crushing hug.

"Hey, V-man!" the Fenton patriarch cheered with a goofy grin that the twins knew all too well. "I've missed you, Vladdie!"

Maddie smiled as she walked over, her goggles hanging around her neck and her hood down for once. "It's great to see you too, Vlad," she said, putting a hand on Danny and Dani's shoulders, pushing them forward. "We haven't had many chances to meet up, especially since the twins were born. I guess it's better that we didn't go to any of the major milestones, though. At four and nine, I don't think I could have brought along these two little monkeys anywhere."

"Mum!" Danny groaned, his face now just as red as Dani's was.

"This is Danny," the Fenton matriarch said regardless, patting her son's shoulder, "and this is Dani." She squeezed Dani's shoulder. Seeing Vlad's briefly very confused expression, she elaborated, "Daniel Jack and Danielle Madeline. Someone made a small mistake in their birth certificates — Danielle was supposed to be Daniella, but the name stuck and they make it work." She glanced down at her children. "Kids, say hi," she said sternly, making the twins fidget.

"Um, sorry," Dani said, scratching the back of her neck. "Hi, Mr Masters, I'm Dani," she said, tugging slightly on her ponytail. _Dad, you can let him go now... people don't hug other people for so long._ She heard Danny snicker over their mental link, and she shot him a quiet glower.

"I'm Danny," the older twin said, ignoring her glare. "But, uh, Dan is fine if it's confusing to try and figure out who is who," he added quickly, seeing the frown on the white-haired billionaire's face. The identical names had always been a problem for the twins whenever they met someone new, but they'd gotten so used to it that it barely registered anymore. "Um, Dad, you can let Mr Masters go now," he suggested slowly.

"What? Oh! Sorry, Vladdie!" Jack exclaimed, releasing the billionaire and stepping back, looking equally sheepish. "Didn't mean to crush you. Are you alright?"

Vlad inhaled deeply, giving the twins a thankful look as he straightened his crooked tie. "Thank you, Jack," he said, sounding audibly relieved. "I'm alright — it's just been a while since I've had one of your... bone-crushers. And please, children. 'Vlad' is enough." He dusted off his black suit jacket and stepped back, smiling at the family. "You've surely had a long trip. Please, come inside! I'll get you some refreshments." He gestured to the open door behind him and waved them in.

The Fenton family was ushered inside, and if Dani had thought the outside of Vlad's castle was a show of his wealth before, she had been wrong. The entrance hall was decked out in green and gold — with the exception of the grey stone that made up the walls and ceiling, as well as a red carpet that covered the entirety of the floor, the entire hallway was a very specific shade of green and accented with gold, with a glass trophy case placed at the very end of the hall beside a grand, sweeping staircase. On the top shelf was a golden football, but below it was a shelf dedicated to trophies, green and silver chrome, but a very specific green that didn't fit anything else.

"Whoa, no way, is that the Gilded Golden Football the Green Bay Packers won last season?" Danny exclaimed when he saw the golden trophy, and almost immediately, Vlad seemed to perk up in delight at the recognition of the statement. _Crap, what did I do now?_

_How do you even recognise that thing?_ Dani asked, watching as Vlad all-but-rushed up to the trophy case and unlocked it, taking the golden football out and holding it up to the light. The girl squinted a bit at the bright light it was reflecting. "Oh wow, it's real gold, isn't it? That's shiny!"

_Well, Terrence was talking about taking a chance at football betting,_ Danny thought back, squinting at the bright light.

"That's right, children!" Vlad exclaimed, as delighted as a kindergartener given unlimited ice cream and high on a really bad sugar rush. "That very trophy was won during the finals of last year." He hugged the trophy as Dani would with her — self-bought! — body pillows of her favourite anime hotties, though it looked far less comfortable since it was hard. "I managed to buy this from them when my fifth attempt to purchase the team this year went down the drain." He sighed, though the statement visibly alarmed both of the twins — five times?!

Jack and Maddie didn't even look alarmed, though. The patriarch of the Fenton family roared with laughter. "After all these years, Vladdie, you're still a fan of the Badgers, aren't you?" he asked with a wide, goofy grin that the family knew all too well. "Guess the two decades haven't changed you all that much." He clapped the man on the back, hard enough that it sent the trophy flying right at the twins.

With a yelp and a gasp, Danny managed to catch the trophy, though it slipped again, and Dani caught it the second time before she was able to return it to Vlad. The twins were too short to reach the top shelf, but Vlad, with the trophy in hand, shot them a grateful look as he put it away.

"So, where will you all be staying for the night?" Vlad asked the adults of the Fenton family as he proceeded to lock up his trophy again, not-too-gently pushing Jack away from the glass case — the patriarch had the cognizance to look sheepish when he did so. "I do so hope that you're not going to be staying at one of the trashy motels in the area near my mansion — they're terrible wastes of money and certainly not worth the dollars you'll have to spend on them. Actually," his smile came back, and along with it, a shiver was sent down Dani's spine, "why don't you and your family stay here with me? My mansion will be able to house your family, no problem!"

Maddie held her hands up into the air. "Vlad, we can't possibly impose!" she protested. "This is your home, and surely you've got other guests you need to entertain!"

"Nonsense," the white-haired man said with a pleasant smile that looked impossibly fake to the eyes of the two teenagers, though their parents didn't seem to pick up on the falseness. He waved a hand like it would wave their concerns away. "I have no guests over and there is more than enough space in the entire mansion's guest wing to give you each a room of your own! Jack, Maddie, you two will_ surely_ need your beauty sleep, no? We'll be taking a lot of pictures tomorrow and you need to be in tip-top shape!" He paused, eyes shifting as if he was contemplating a secret, but to Dani's eyes, it was visibly exaggerated.

And she would know — in elementary school, Dani had been in a school play as a shifty character.

Vlad leaned towards the two adults with a smile. "The ghost of the Dairy King is said to lurk around this place."

Like a switch had been flipped, both Maddie and Jack looked enthusiastic. "A ghost, you say?" Jack inquired with a wide, goofy grin. "Well Vladdie, if you insist..."

"Certainly!"

"Then we're staying!" Maddie exclaimed, making the twins share a concerned look. "Kids, go and get your suitcases!"

_I've got a really bad feeling about this, Dan,_ Dani thought with a grimace. _Mr Masters is..._

_Acting super fake. I know, Dani. Something's_ up, Danny thought back. _Let's be careful._

* * *

Danny yawned as he flopped down onto the bed in the guest room, having just changed into his pyjamas. His hair fell over his eyes — he'd have to cut it at some point — but he was tired enough from wandering around the mansion with Dani to not care about it. As the teen closed his eyes, a cold wisp of air escaped his lips, and he immediately shot straight up from the bed, eyes wide. "Dani!"

"Yup, ghostie around," Dani confirmed. The younger of the twins poked her head out of the bathroom, her shoulder-length hair down around a scowling face. "Let's get them!" White rings formed around the girl, bisecting and passing over her to transform her into her ghostly identity, which, thankfully, put her hair up into a ponytail. "Come on, Dan, let's get going!" she exclaimed, turning intangible as she shot through the door.

The older of the Phantom twins shook his head, transforming as well and following after his brasher sister. "Let's find the ghosts." Letting his sister lead the two down the halls — Dani had a better 'ghost detector GPS' than he did, according to Penny and Terrence — Danny guarded her back as they hovered down several metres of carpeted halls. They turned a few corners before they finally saw the ectoplasmic green glow of a ghost.

More accurately, they saw three green vulture ghosts, hovering uncertainly around the bulky form of Jack Fenton, wearing his classic Day-Glo orange hazmat suit under his striped pyjamas — how did he sleep in that, anyway? It was so uncomfortable — as he mumbled something incoherent, sleepwalking down the halls.

_Oh crap. Who gave dad soda before bed?_ Danny thought, paling. _At least he's asleep..._

Dani's hands charged up with blazing green energy, and she fired a blast at the ghost vultures. "Hey, I thought we taught you a lesson last time!" she growled, knowing that with how heavily the Fenton patriarch slept, it would take much more than just some shouting and fighting to wake him up. And without waiting for an answer, the younger twin blasted the vultures one by one with a shout, knocking them away from Jack as she shot towards them to take them down again.

Danny ensured that his father wouldn't walk into anything dangerous and shot off after his sister, combined blasts and physical punches until the vultures were subdued, which didn't take too long. Sending a blast into the face of one of the three vultures, it made the rest of them squawk and fly off. "And scram!" Danny added for good measure, hearing his sister groan at the quip. "What?" he almost whined. "It was a good quip!"

"I'm afraid you may have to brush up on your witty banter, boy," a new voice interrupted, immediately sending both twins into a mode of high alert as they spun around, only to come face-to-face with Dracule in a white cape... or well, what looked like it, anyway, even if the blue skin did throw them off a little. The release of their ghost sense, though, alerted them immediately that the vampire-wannabe in front of them was indeed a ghost.

Danny's bright green eyes narrowed, blazing a toxic green. His fist was encased in blazing green as he faced the ghost, moving in front of his sister defensively. "You'd better back off," he demanded, recognising the flippant, mocking tone as one he wouldn't consider friendly. "Or I'm going to blast you! Now, what do you want?"

"My, my, why so aggressive, my boy?" the vampire inquired, only for Dani to blast him first, shooting a beam of toxic green in his face, which the blue-skinned ghost easily evaded. "Dear girl, be a bit more tactful, won't you?" A pink glow enveloped his fists, and he flung his arm out at her, sending three pink disks at her that narrowly shaved past her shoulder.

Dani yelped, ducking her head and losing only a bare millimetre of hair from the attacks. "Oh, you called for it!" she exclaimed, kicking off into the air and shooting at him despite Danny calling out to his twin to not be as brash. Despite it, she lunged straight for it, pulling her fist back to throw a punch, only for her fist, encased in green, to be caught by the ghost's gloved fist, and then promptly thrown into the wall, hard enough to keep her down and out of the fight for the time being.

"Dani!" Danny exclaimed, turning his attention to the vampire and snarling as he shot towards the ghost, both fists now glowing green as he sought to protect his sister. Just like Dani, though, the ghost easily countered his strikes and blasted him squarely in the shoulder, throwing him back into the wall next to his sister. With a hard enough impact, he was disoriented enough to start seeing black spots, and he collapsed next to Dani like a puppet with its strings cut, falling in an undignified heap.

Although he could have sworn he saw something black and _glowing_ in his peripheral vision...

But before Danny could even figure out what was going on, though, the black spots consumed his vision, and he blacked out.

* * *

"I officially hate this," Dani muttered to her older brother as they arrived at the hall the next night, looking down the stair bannisters at the crowd already present. She huffed, smoothing out her blue dress. The Fenton adults were wearing their customary jumpsuits, though Maddie Fenton had her hood down and Jack Fenton was wearing a yellow and blue tie. Meanwhile, the twins had brought along more appropriate clothes for the occasion, having thought it would have been a necessity, which left Dani in a belted blue dress and Danny in a stripped-down suit with a blue tie. The younger twin was now just wishing she had brought along something way more comfortable, but it was too late for it already.

Danny rolled his shoulder, grimacing as his jacket rubbed against his sore shoulder through his shirt. "Tell me about it," he said with a huff. "And we still have that vampire ghost to worry about. I still don't get it — why would he knock us out and not kill us? It certainly wasn't a dream since my shoulder still hurts a lot. It's like Baxter shoved me into a locker shoulder-first or something."

Dani huffed. _Not that loud, Dan,_ she thought to him, pursing her lips together into a grim line. _We don't want anyone to overhear, and you know how crazy our parents can be about this... they're wearing their jumpsuits for goodness sake._

_Sorry, Dani._ Danny grimaced. The last thing they needed was for them to be kicked out, especially since it would be ridiculously late when they got back to Amity Park if they didn't get to spend the night. Even if their father could easily stay awake for the entire time of the drive, it would still be pretty taxing on the Fenton Patriarch.

"Daniel, Danielle," Vlad called, the man walking up the stairs to meet them — their parents were already downstairs, mingling with old college friends. "Well now, don't you two look charming tonight? I don't mean to be rude and interrupt your enjoyment of the evening," he smirked a bit, "though I do sincerely doubt that you two are enjoying this stuffy old party any more than I am out of formalities. Moving on, will you two do me a favour and go down to my lab? I left a gift down there for your parents and forgot to bring it up to give to them. It's three levels down the stairs with the elevator, and then a turn to the left, towards the dead end."

The twins shared a look.

_Suspicious or no?_ Dani inquired to her brother, her right brow arching upwards infinitesimally.

_Very suspicious. But I say we should go and take a look anyway_, Danny thought, the corner of his lips curling downwards. "Alright, Mr Masters — um, I mean, Vlad," he amended. "Dani and I'll go down and see if we can find it. What's it look like?"

"It's a box in black, you'll certainly know it when you see it," Vlad answered with a tight smile. "Go on, children. I'll be waiting around here for you. A host can't leave his party, after all."

"Sure..." Dani let her words drag on a little, pursing her lips together, but she took Danny by the wrist and pulled him along to the elevator. They'd figure it out, hopefully. Five minutes later, she was opening the lab doors and stepping inside a chrome-plated room that looked very much similar to the Fenton basement. "Okay, now where is it?" she asked aloud, walking around in the lab, looking at the smooth countertops that were covered in construction paper plans and metal bits placed in boxes to hold the loose bits. Her blue eyes fell on a table at the far end, and she brightened. "Nevermind, I found it!"

The black box was wrapped with a pink ribbon, but that wasn't what was odd, though. Beside it was a picture frame that was set face-down on the table, and out of curiosity, Dani picked it up, setting it back into place. Her eyes widened at what she saw — a partially torn Polaroid photo that was of three people, one on the far left missing their head, but wearing a very recognisable orange jumpsuit. The woman in the middle had a messy head full of brunette curls, her face scribbled out by markers. On the right was Vlad, looking much younger, and with dark hair. All three were wearing labcoats.

The twins shared a glance, and Danny produced the torn scrap that had their father's face on it. Putting it up against the picture, the torn edges lined up perfectly. "He's after dad!" Danny exclaimed.

"And mum too," Dani added, seeing the scribbling on the woman's face and putting two and two together. "We've got to stop him!" Transforming immediately, along with her brother, the two twins prepared to shoot out of the lab to confront the man. Before they could go anywhere, though, a heavy metal chain suddenly hooked around their ankles, yanking them back and falling onto the floor. "Hey, what gives?!" Dani sputtered.

"I'm sure you're eager to know, whelp," a familiar voice sneered, accompanied by heavy metallic footsteps.

"Skulker!" the twins exclaimed in unison, looking behind them to see the robotic hunter standing above them, holding the end to the metal chain that was wrapped around their ankles.

"How did you get your suit back? I could have sworn Deliah smashed it to bits!" Danny said with a frown. He didn't get an answer, though, as Skulker went over to the table, picking up the black box by the sides, and tossing it at the two, pulling on the ribbon as he went. The box suddenly unfolded and reformed into a black cage around the twins, sending a painful electric shock through them that almost immediately forced the twins out of their ghost forms.

Dan tried to transform, but when the white rings formed, she was immediately shocked again, making her scoot back towards the centre of the cage. "Ouch, okay, not going to try that," she muttered.

"Finally! I have you two half-ghost hybrids in my grasp!" Skulker sneered. "I finally get to skin you two and put your pelts on my mantle—!"

The lab doors opened. "That's enough, Skulker," Vlad's voice chastised. "I told you to capture the children, not kill them! You will receive your payment and upgrades later; for now, get out of my lab, thank you."

Grumbling, the robotic hunter folded immediately, stepped back and phasing right out of the lab without so much as a sound of protest. It showed one thing, at least, that Vlad held some crazy sway over him. And that he was working under the billionaire, but that was obvious enough.

The lab doors were shut once again as Vlad walked into the room to stand in front of the twins, the lights in the room turning on to full intensity. The billionaire looked quite solemn as he faced the two, his hands clasped behind his back, standing straight up and pulling himself to his full height. "Now, Daniel, Danielle... you must be wondering what is going on, correct? Allow me to show you." A black ring formed around his waist, bisecting and passing over him. As the rings travelled across his body, the man was transformed into the same blue-skinned vampire ghost from the previous night.

"You!" Dani exclaimed, jerking to the front of the cage and gripping the bars. "You were the one who hurt Dan last night!" she accused. "And not only that, you sent those old buzzards after dad! Plus, who knows what you've got in store for mum?! What do you want?" She tried to transform again, only to get another shock. Quickly, she was pulled back by her brother, who shoved her behind him.

Danny bared a snarl at the man, knowing that the twins' suspicions of him had been correct after all. If this man was threatening his parents, he wouldn't let him even have another chance to hurt his little sister. "What do you want, Vlad?" he hissed, his eyes glowing green, only to get him shocked. "You hurt Dani last night; you attempted to hurt dad, and whatever you're going to do to mum. Are you going to try and kill all of us now?"

The billionaire half-ghost looked almost affronted. "Kill all of you?" he asked, frowning. "Most certainly not, Daniel! Why on earth would I do that to you and your sister? You two, the only people in the world who would ever be able to understand me as a fellow half-ghost hybrid?" He stepped closer to the twins, holding out a hand to them, though they were still locked inside their cage. "You see, my dear children, your parents are ghost hunters that truly know nothing about ghosts. All they think ghosts are are the mindless, blobs of ectoplasm that float around the Ghost Zone. They think all ghosts are evil, irredeemable — not that they would try anyway. Would they ever accept the fact that their dearest children are now two 'filthy, stinking ghosts'?" he asked, putting the last part in quotes.

The phrase set something off in the twins as they shared a glance. They had refused to say anything to their parents about the accident because of their parents' profession, and Vlad seemed to know it, having struck directly at their one greatest fear, aside from death. "They wouldn't," the twins said in unison, almost too quickly to sound like they believed what they were saying. "We're their kids!"

"Wouldn't they?" Vlad arched a brow at them. "Do you believe that, my dear children? You won't ever know for sure unless you try it, and if they would, then it would be too late, now wouldn't it?"

Danny gripped the bars of the cage and glared up at the man. "You're insane!" he accused with a scowl. "They would never hurt us!"

Vlad barked with laughter, walking over and clasping his hands behind his back. "Am I now, my boy? But that's not what I'm here for. Regardless of your thoughts, it is a _fact_ that your parents will not be able to accommodate you satisfactorily. They will not be able to adequately understand you or your situation nor will they be able to help you with your powers. No one can. No, no one but me. I am just like the two of you children, half-ghost, treading between the two worlds! I have all the powers you have now, and more! I could teach you two to control your powers, to reach your full potential. All I need from you is simple..." He leaned into the cage, enough so that red eyes could meet with blue, and a wide grin pulled at his lips. "All you have to do is simply to renounce your parents and join me as my wards."

The twins were left gaping at the man's absolute gall, their minds furiously trading thoughts through the mental link they shared to the point where they were no longer sure who was thinking what — it was that much of a mess in their minds as they tried to comprehend the level of arrogance and self-assuredness this man had. Vlad Masters had sent hitmen out on their father twice, played affable to their parents, and wanted them to join him; no doubt, he also had some sort of scheme to off both the Fenton adults as well.

Danny found his voice first, the boy sputtering, "Why do you even think we'd do that?" He looked incredulous. "We get it, mom and dad got you into an accident that ruined your post-college life, but that's over now, isn't it? You became a billionaire! Why are you doing this to our parents? They were your friends!"

Vlad sneered at him, red eyes glowing angrily as he levitated into the air, his cape billowing ominously even though there was no wind in the lab. "Friends?" the vampire snarled. "What kind of friends leave the friend they injured in the hospital to rot? What kind of friends set their friend up for a disastrous prank the week before our final semester project? What kind of friends are they?!" He bared large fangs at the twins, red eyes now bright and angry.

"Mum and dad would never!" Dani burst out angrily, pushing past Danny to glare up at Vlad. "You can just go and shove your crazy aspirations of killing our parents where the sun don't shine!"

A blast of pink energy surged, scorching past the twins' cage and into the ground. "Fine," Vlad sneered. "Then the two of you can stay here until I'm done taking out your parents, and then you'll see things my way." With a sweep of his white opera cape, the vampire ghost disappeared.

"Crap, we need to get out of here and get our parents to safety!" Danny exclaimed in a panic, trying to go intangible to phase through the cage, but was once again shocked. He blurted out a curse in pain, recoiling from the bars, but in his haste, he realised something — the bars had briefly flickered, and in their instability, he'd pulled his fist right through the bar he was holding onto. It wasn't nearly long enough to get himself through the gap — which was too small anyway — but it gave him an idea.

_Dani, I've got an idea,_ he informed his twin, shaking his hand and waiting for the prickling pain of the electric shock to fade away completely. When he had his sister's attention, he continued, this time aloud, "The bars responded to my intangibility a bit when I tried to phase through them. We tried to phase through the cage individually, but we got shocked, and the bars reacted so quickly that they might not have reacted at all. What if we try using our intangibility at the same time?"

Dani caught on. "Right, it might be able to overload the bars for long enough that one of us can slip through," she figured. "Should I go? I'm more flexible than you are."

The older twin nodded, rolling back the sleeves of his suit and dress shirt. "Alright, let's give this a try." Resting his feet on two different bars, he also gripped two other bars, ready to channel his intangibility through them.

The younger did the same, and on a mental count to three, they attempted to phase through the bars, holding on for long enough that the bars visibly distorted, and both immediately released the bars; Danny scooted back, while Dani tumbled through before changing into Dani Phantom. The white-haired ghost girl flew over to the table, sweeping around it before she found a remote on the countertop that shared a similar theme and design with the cage.

A press of the button dismantled the cage's ghost-suppressing abilities, and Danny was soon released, the half-ghost boy transforming and joining his sister in the air as well. "Great job, Dani. Now let's go and save our parents!"

"Right!"

* * *

Danny phased up from the floor, Dani alongside him, the Phantom twins invisible and intangible as they appeared in the ballroom, just in time to see the ballroom in chaos as the Fenton RV revved its wheels, partially trapped inside the wall, partially out. With a loud screech, the vehicle suddenly lunged forward, barrelling towards an Asian woman in a green pantsuit.

Jack leapt forward, pushing his old classmate out of the way, placing him in the way of the RV as it drove forward at full speed. "Harrie!" he yelled. "Get out of here!"

"Jack!" Maddie gasped. The Fenton matriarch had her hood on as well as her goggles as she rushed towards her husband to try and extract him from the situation before it was too late.

The twins didn't need to even share a glance before they shot off like bullets towards the Fenton RV, phasing through it to see no one at the driver's seat. Well, not quite. As Dani fired a blast towards the empty seat, it bounced off a pink shield that suddenly flickered into place, before falling entirely to reveal Vlad at the wheel.

"Resourceful, my dears," the vampire grudgingly obliged. "But even so, you can't stop me!" His form suddenly split and replicated, two identical copies of the ghost appearing and lunging at each of the twins to attack them.

Danny moved in front of his sister, both hands blazing with green energy. _I'll take these two, Dani,_ he thought to her, pulling his fist back and throwing a punch towards one of the Vlad clones. He'd wisened up from last time, though, and instead of hitting the older half-ghost hybrid, he put enough distance between them so that when his arm was fully extended, his fist was still out of Vlad's reach. Instead of punching, he used the momentum to fire a blast of energy towards the man.

Caught off guard, the blast hit one of the clones in the chest and immediately dissipated it, leaving Danny facing the sole clone left. "Gotcha," the white-haired boy said triumphantly.

"Well done, but you can certainly do better, no?" Vlad inquired condescendingly. He raised a gloved fist and blasted Danny straight in the chest, sending him shooting back into the back of the RV. Immediately, the RV jerked, throwing both the male half-ghosts into the side of the vehicle. The impact dissipated Vlad's clone, leaving Danny at the back of the RV.

Up in the front, Dani had engaged in a fight with Vlad until she'd managed to wrest control of the wheel, if only for a moment. She forcibly grabbed the wheel, making a sharp left turn that swerved the vehicle from its path to kill the Fenton adults, crashing it into the drinks table, and ramming it into the wall of the room, which broke them into the library. Using the momentum to her advantage, Dani grabbed hold of the man, turning both of them intangible, and pushing herself off from the driver's seat. The force yanked both of them out of the RV and tossed them into the library.

"Game over, Vlad," she growled at the man that had threatened her parents. "You're out!" She grabbed him by his collar, her green eyes blazing a toxic green.

Vlad grinned menacingly, baring his fangs as he reached up, his much larger hands clamping around her forearms. "Nice try, little weasel," he said with a taunting smirk. "But not this time." His gloves lit up with pink electricity, sending a shock through Dani and forcing her to release him. "But unfortunately, you and the little badger still have much to learn."

Bewildered by the strange nicknames for what she could only assume to be herself and Danny, Dani was given a mental heads-up just in time to duck, and a glob of green goo was fired from the RV that was still trapped inside the wall. The girl had managed to block Vlad's sight of the car and ducking at just the right time made it so that the blast from the anti-ghost weaponry in the RV would hit Vlad. The sticky goop managed to essentially trap the blue-skinned hybrid to the floor, imprisoning him while Dani gathered an ectoblast in her hand.

Danny phased out from the RV, having used the weaponry in the vehicle to trap the man and the older of the Phantom duo flew over to his sister. "Looks like we've bested you this time, Vlad," he said, narrowing his eyes. He copied his sister, his fist lighting up with green energy. "Give us one reason, Vlad. One reason why we shouldn't just lay on the hurt for threatening our family."

"I could transform back right now," the vampire ghost said slyly with a smirk, making both the teens pause. If their parents caught them, ghost form or not, beating up their old college friend, there was no way it would come across well either way.

Both the twins reacted in the same way, acting on autopilot. Each grabbed a fistful of the ghost's collar, pulling him up towards them so that the two pairs of green eyes could meet the red irises. "Listen here, _Vlad,_" Danny began in a low, angry voice.

"I don't care who you think you are," Dani hissed, continuing. "But you don't threaten to hurt our parents and get away with it."

Danny took over again. "By revealing yourself to us, you've given us a trump card. If you think our parents will kill us, they'll also be able to kill you if they know."

"So if you value your life..." Dani growled.

"You'll leave right now, and we won't expose all three of us," the twins finished in unison, their toxic green eyes blazing.

Vlad smirked. "How sly of you, my dears. We really are more alike than you know." With a grin, the blue-skinned spectre turned intangible and phased through the floor. "Don't worry, I'll be back, and you'll see things my way, eventually," he promised, his voice echoing. "You'll understand soon enough."

* * *

"I can't believe that the RV got possessed by a ghost," Jack Fenton griped to his wife, with the twins in the back of the vehicle, listening intently to the conversation. "At least Vladdie was nice enough to let us stay overnight while we got the RV repaired."

"I know, I can't believe we managed to reconnect!" Maddie exclaimed.

True to what the adults had said, Vlad Masters had indeed given them an opportunity to stay the night, as the RV had taken some damage when it crashed through walls and Jack needed some time to repair it so it wouldn't get them pulled over by the road authorities. The twins had been worried that he would pull some schemes, but absolutely nothing happened, which only made them even more uneasy.

Moving back to the seats further back in the RV, Dani sank into the red leather of the seat. "So what now?" she asked her brother, her brow knitting together.

"Honestly, I don't know," Danny said with a frown. "We're still grounded. Vlad's still out there. Our parents are still in danger." He exhaled. "I guess all we can do is... you know, wait and see."

Dani frowned. "That doesn't sit well with me, but until we can talk with the others, this is all we can do." Her eyes shifted. "We should get training. Who knows what he'll do next time?" She folded her arms over her chest.

"You've got a point." Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. "Either way, we know he's coming now."

"That's five hours of sleep gone."

Danny stared at his sister, and he couldn't help but chuckle. "You always know how to lighten the mood, Dani."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bitter Reunions turned out a bit darker than I intended. You'll notice, though, that Vlad is not interested in Maddie here, just her two children. In this world, he has realised that the only person/people who could really understand him would be similar people as to him. That is why he's out for Jack and Maddie's blood instead of just Jack.
> 
> I actually do have a more redemptive arc for Vlad planned here. He's bitter over the Fentons leaving him for years, but he's also very hurt. Doesn't excuse his actions, but yeah. There's an arc for him.


	8. Prisoners of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the Phantom twins lose their father's anniversary gift, they end up breaking a few federal ghost laws. Now, they have to escape prison, and hopefully, save their parents' marriage before its too late!

"Is that a rocket ship?"

The twins were standing in front of their father's latest invention, a chrome-plated vehicle with a clear glass windshield. Or, well, it _looked _like glass. Neither of the twins would have put it past their parents to have crafted the windshield out of transparent metal for additional 'features'. Glowing green lines were spread out across the chrome body, lighting up neon green to indicate... well, something. Danny was personally betting on 'hazard lights', while Dani was thinking them to be the weapon storage slots.

Jack Fenton patted the bonnet of the vehicle with a joyous, goofy grin. "It's the Spectre Speeder," he announced gleefully. "A completely functional, amphibious motorised vehicle that can fly effortlessly through the air and the sea! It's been outfitted with several weapons—" here, he opened the door and excitedly ushered the twins inside with one large hand, before stepping in himself, "— like the all-new Fenton Giga Ecto-Blaster!" He slammed his fist onto a large green button, which prompted the roof of the Speeder to open up and allow an enlarged version of Terrence's ectoplasm-shooting cannon to emerge.

Before the Fenton patriarch could continue with his enthusiastic introduction of the rest of the Spectre Speeder's capabilities, though, Maddie walked down into the basement, her hands on her hips as she stood outside the open door of the Speeder. "Jack," she called with the same warm voice she always used with her family, though something was underlying in her tone that made both twins instinctively back up against the other end of the front compartment. "Do you remember what day it is?"

The large man scratched the back of his head, perplexed. "Err, give me a second, Mads," he said, heading out of the Spectre Speeder and going towards their workbench, where a large calendar was hung on the wall. He squinted, reading the number that was circled there with a red marker, and then immediately turned back to his wife. "Ninth of May, Maddie!" he exclaimed innocently.

_Oh. Oh no._ Danny frowned.

_Dad's forgotten their wedding anniversary again, hasn't he__?_ Dani thought back.

_Yup._

A slam on the bonnet of the Spectre Speeder made both the kids jump, the door suddenly slamming shut and the lock on the door activating. Impressively, the thick walls of the vehicle didn't even block out the brunt of Maddie Fenton's angered shouting. "Jack Fenton! Do you not remember what day it is?! This is the _eighteenth time you've forgotten!_" The woman's voice had grown hysterical, and to punctuate her statement, she slammed her fist down onto the bonnet again.

_"Auto-Jack activated!"_ Jack Fenton's cheerful, recorded voice played over the speakers in the Spectre Speeder. _"Heading into the Ghost Zone! Buckle up!" _Before either of the twins could do anything to stop the chrome vehicle from moving, the Spectre Speeder lurched forward, and at speeds that some cars would envy, launched into the open portal, which immediately slammed shut behind them.

"Oh, good grief!" Dani exclaimed, scrambling towards the driver's seat as the seatbelt automatically locked in front of her. She put her hands on the steering wheel, trying to take control and swerve the vehicle back towards the now shut Fenton Portal. Unfortunately for her, the auto-pilot, or rather, the auto-Jack driving system, was still in control, and the fourteen-year-old girl was nowhere near strong enough to overcome the force of the mechanical system. "Dan, help!"

"On it!" Danny called, scrambling over and putting his hands on one end of the wheel, while Dani shifted her hands to the other. Together, the two tried to twist the wheel in one direction, but the wheel remained locked in place. "Does this thing even turn at all?!" the black-haired boy exclaimed in frustration, exerting as much force as he could until his face was red from the exertion.

Dani gave up, throwing her hands into the air. "Great. Let it never be said that Dad's not a genius, but dang it, he forgets that not all of us have his upper arm strength," she complained. She leaned back in her seat, sinking into the plush chairs with a grimace — Jack Fenton was a great inventor and father, but he... tended to forget things at times. A _lot_ of things, like how things that applied to him usually didn't apply to others. "Better get strapped in, Dan. We'll have to figure out how to disable the auto-pilot somehow, but forcing the wheel is going to be useless."

Danny frowned as he got into the passenger seat, leaning forward to look at the glossy chrome panel that was right in front of his seat. A gentle touch lit it up with glowing lines that formed boxes and squares — switches and buttons — and he began looking around the board to see if he could find a button to deactivate the auto-pilot so that the twins could find their way back.

After searching quite thoroughly for five minutes, the Spectre Speeder drifting further and further into the green, purple and black-swirled realm, Danny finally found the stupid button, which had been right under his nose the whole time. _AUTO-JACK_ was printed on the green button with his father's neon-orange jumpsuit colours lighting up his name. Resisting the urge to smack his head into the control panel, Danny hit the button and deactivated the thrusters, releasing the auto-pilot lock on the wheel. "Can you try it again, Dani?" he called.

The younger twin tested the wheel, and much to her delight, the wheel turned with her hand movement. "Great!" She slammed her foot down on the breaks, just in time to draw within sight of a large, grey building that was topped with barbed wire and floodlights. The Spectre Speeder skidded and jerked to an abrupt stop, nearly sending the twins flying out of their seats if it hadn't been for their seatbelts. "Ow." Dani frowned, seeing white figures moving towards them. "Uh, Dan, I think we have company," the girl said slowly.

Danny looked up from the control panel, seeing white ghostly figures surround the Speeder. "Uh-oh," he muttered quietly, tugging on the seatbelts and trying to figure out how to get them off.

"Taking off your seatbelt while still in the vehicle? That's _illegal_, punk," a Southern voice drawled. "Keep it on, it'll save your life one of these days."

Danny cringed. "Right, sorry," he muttered, raising both hands to show that he wasn't trying to fumble with the seatbelt anymore. "Look, sir," he said to the male voice, though he couldn't see where the voice was coming from, "my sister and I are just trying to find our way back. Can you point us to the big swirling portal that should be somewhere around here in a straight line?"

The white figures that were surrounding the Spectre Speeder suddenly melted together, twisting and swirling into a massive white figure garbed in a white trenchcoat and a black fedora. The massive ghost pushed his hat back, revealing a green-eyed, somewhat skeletal-looking ghost. "The name's Walker, kids, know it, fear it, obey it. The two of you own human-world items. That's a misdemeanour, punks!"

Dani cringed. "Sorry, Mr Walker, but we were kind of thrown in here with the Speeder," she tried to explain. "We're going to be out of here as soon as we can, I promise. I swear we didn't do this on purpose." She didn't expect it to work, considering that the same tactic never worked on Mr Lancer, but to her surprise, it seemed to give Walker pause.

"Not knowing the law isn't an excuse to be breakin' it, punks," Walker grunted, "but just so you two don't do it again, here." He snapped his fingers and a thick book that was at least the size of an old-school phone book popped into existence on the windshield of the Spectre Speeder. "A copy of all the laws near my realm. Better read 'em and commit them to memory. This time, I'll let you punks go, but next time I catch you two breaking the law again, you'll be getting much more than just a warning."

The massive white ghost paused. "And the portal you're looking for is in that direction," he added, pointing their way before the ghost's form twisted into a white cyclone and vanished.

Dani let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness... I can't believe that worked... Wonder why it never works with Lancer." She shook her head, turning her attention to the wheel and twisting it to change their course, while Danny fiddled with the control panel to try and get the rule book on the windshield off. "I didn't know the Ghost Zone had a prison and laws."

"Yeah, I guess mum and dad aren't all that right after all," Danny mused quietly. "They've always said that ghosts are spirits of dead people, ghosts are incapable of sentient thought... but all that's wrong, based on what we already know." He exhaled slowly. "You know, I wonder if Vlad was kind of right. Our parents don't even know anything about real ghosts — can they accept us?"

Dani frowned, her hands tightening around the steering wheel as she began to guide them in the direction of the Fenton Ghost Portal. "I'm scared too, you know," she mumbled quietly. "But that doesn't mean that we're going to go to him either, Dan. He's a terrible person."

Danny nodded his head, operating a mechanical claw and navigating the book off the windshield and into a chute that deposited the book into his lap, making him grunt at how heavy it was. "Ow! This is heavy!"

"Oh wow, That's like... Filch's list of prohibited items from Harry Potter," Dani said as the Ghost Portal came back into view, open again after accidentally having powered down earlier. The Spectre Speeder was effortlessly guided back into the same place it had originally been before it had been set off, and Dani beamed, making sure to turn off the vehicle so that it wouldn't happen again.

"Nice job! Your driver's license is going to be easy to get after this," Danny praised his sister, finally finding the mechanism to unlock his seatbelt. He peered out the window. "Oh, mum and dad are still... fighting..." he trailed off with a frown.

No sooner had he said it did Maddie Fenton storm towards the stairs of the basement, and the twins scrambled to open the door of the Spectre Speeder and listen to what they were saying."

"—Mads, please don't leave!"

"You can't stop me, Jack!" Maddie snapped, fuming. "I'm heading to Arkansas for the divorce!"

The twins felt their hearts plummet into the pits of their stomachs in unison, the dropping feeling terrifying. They stared at each other, blue eyes wide, the same thought running through their heads.

_Divorce?!_

* * *

"— and now they're going to divorce!" Danny said, panicked, to his laptop as he and Dani sat in front of it. The laptop was placed open on their parents' workbench down in the basement lab, on a video call window with their friends. The poor boy was stressed, on the verge of pulling his hair out, as was evident with his mop of dark hair sticking out in every which way.

Dani's beanie was nowhere to be seen as the girl shifted and fidgeted in her seat, her brow furrowed together. "They do this every year," she said quietly, unusually quiet for the girl. "Argue, I mean. Mum and Dad _never_ argue normally, but anniversaries, birthdays and Christmas are when they _always_ get all up into each other. It's never escalated to that before, though." She blinked furiously, trying to prevent tears from falling. "I'm not sure what's going to happen this time."

_"I... well, I honestly don't know, Dannies,"_ Terrence admitted. _"You guys know I don't have much contact with my 'rents. The best I can tell you is to try and help smooth their relationship over."_

_"Terr's got a point," _Penny said, leaning back in her chair at her bedroom desk. _"Pa didn't do that to Mum and look at how it turned out. They divorced and Mum ended up remarrying later on." _She huffed a little. _"I can try to help, but I don't know how much I can. Your parents aren't exactly conventional, in a sense... Not to offend, I mean," _she stammered.

Danny shook his head, getting up. "Don't worry about it... we're both just a little wound up by this. Guess we'd better start trying to figure things out. Both our parents are going to be in Arkansas for a while, so maybe we should clean up first?" He sighed heavily as he surveyed the lab — it was a mess from earlier on. "Dani?"

"On it," the girl mumbled dourly as she got up, heading upstairs to find the vacuum and hope that their parents hadn't contaminated it with ectoplasm. "On the bright side, I guess we're free to practice with our powers until they come back... If they ever do." Her shoulders slumped, and Danny immediately hurried over to her, slinging an arm around her shoulder.

"Hey, it's going to be okay," he comforted. "We're going to find a way to get this smoothed over." With a squeeze, he saw his sister slowly form a smile, and the older of the twins grinned. "See? Things are looking better already. Now let's find the vacuum and clean up, m'kay?"

"M'kay," Dani mumbled with a small smile. "Thanks, Dan. You always know how to make things better."

Danny grinned at his sister. "I'm the older brother. It's my job to make everything better for you." Seeing his sister disappear through the basement door, he turned to the laptop. "Hey guys, I'm running short on battery power now and I should plug my phone in," he said, leaning on the counter to see them better. "And maybe end the call too. We're going to be pretty busy for the next few hours."

_"S'okay," _Terrence reassured him. _"I'm about to log off anyway. Gotta check on the stock market and all that, you know? Rex says hi, and wants you to visit too,"_ he informed with quite the cheeky grin before he ended the call on his end.

Penny laughed, looking back at Danny. _"Hey, all power to you and Dani here," _she told him earnestly. _"If anyone can do it, you two can. Just don't do anything drastic without consulting us first. Have fun cleaning up, okay? Bye, and tell Dani she can come over any time to sleep over if she wants."_

"Will do, Pen," Danny promised, waving goodbye as the Asian girl signed off as well. Turning to the rest of the lab, he sighed. "Let's get started." He paused, then transformed, using his flight and enhanced speed to collect the papers all scattered throughout the lab, stacking them and putting them aside. He proceeded to put things back in their place, using his intangibility to shove things into the cupboards without even needing to open them.

He turned a cupboard door intangible, putting metal tools into it. Accidentally, he overfilled the cupboard, and a box wrapped in blue and red paper fell out, bouncing lightly on the floor and skidding towards the open Fenton Portal. It teetered on the edge of the floor to-portal ledge, and as Dani opened the door, the sudden gust of wind sent it falling into the green portal, leaving behind a single tag.

_Maddie, Happy Anniversary._

Dani picked it up as she came down the stairs, and reading what was printed on it, she paled. "Dan! We just sent Dad's anniversary gift to Mum falling into the Ghost Zone!" she yelped.

"I did what now?!" Danny exclaimed in horror, whirling around to see the portal ripple. "... oh no... oh no, no, no, no, no!" He fumbled for his phone, calling Penny and Terrence back hastily and leaving a voice message when neither picked up. "Guys, we need you to come over, ASAP!"

* * *

Five minutes later, Penny was in the Fenton lab-cum-basement, while Terrence was on a video call from his home desktop, and between the two, they were helping the Fenton twins get ready for their excursion to the Ghost Zone.

"So... are you sure that this is something we should do?" Penny asked as Dani strapped herself into the driver's seat, double-checking that her seatbelt was functioning. "You've never headed into the Ghost Zone like this before, you know." The Asian girl checked her clipboard with a hastily-written list that she'd composed while running to the Fenton house, and checked off the equipment that the twins had loaded in. "Okay, weapons, check," she muttered, "shotgun passenger — Danny?"

The older of the twins got in, shooting her a thumbs-up. "Just making sure everything's alright. I wish dad and mum left us a manual, but I can figure things out when it comes to the controls. You got the monitoring system hooked up, Terr?" he asked his friend on the PDA he'd affixed to the control panel, having plugged in a phone jack.

_"It's linked to Penny's phone and my monitor,"_ the boy affirmed with a nod. _"Dannies, you two gotta be careful. We don't know how this could go wrong."_

"If you two encounter any trouble at all that could ostensibly lead to trouble," Penny added, "I want you guys to come straight back. We'll figure out something about the gift after." She hugged her clipboard to her body and stepped back from the door as Danny shut it through the control panel. _"Testing the mic— do you read me, Dan?" _Her voice crackled through the speakers, loud and clear, just like Terrence's feed.

"Roger that, Penny," the half-ghost boy affirmed. "Let's go, Dani."

"Aye aye, Dan," the younger twin said, turning on the engine and getting the Spectre Speeder off the ground. "Hey, you think the government can take this as me doing required practice for my driver's license once I'm old enough?" she asked casually as she drove the Speeder into the portal, watching through the windshield as metal and chrome warped into swirling green depths. "Geez, that's always really spooky..."

"Second time's the charm," Danny muttered. "Did you bring Walker's giant Book o' Rules?"

"Nope — made the Spectre Speeder too heavy and it was flashing warning lights."

_"Guys, focus on your task," _Penny chided gently. _"Those doors ahead, according to your parents' notes, lead to the lairs of ghosts. Look around and see if you can find where your parents' gift went. Terrence is charting its possible movement now, but it'll take a while, so try hunting yourself first. We'll get back to you if there's anything incoming."_

Danny nodded, adjusting the phone and turning on the headlights of the Spectre Speeder. "Gotcha, Penny. Thanks a bunch, Terr." The bright lights lit up the area in front of them as Dani piloted the vehicle forward, guiding them further into the Ghost Zone and further away from the Fenton Portal until the bright green vortex was no longer in sight. "Should I transform and go out?"

"No, Walker's rules said that trespassing is a crime, remember?" Dani reminded him. "Let's just keep searching with the headlights."

After a few minutes of searching for the gift, nothing was coming up on Danny's radar, but Terrence spoke up immediately over the phone. _"I found it, or at least, the trajectory according to the flow and current of the material and wind speed. It might be a bit off due to unforeseen factors, but the math should be spot on. I'm sending you your coordinates now, Dani, but please don't turn on the auto-pilot since I had to recalibrate it relative to my position. I'll keep updating when I get more environmental information."_

Danny's control panel blinked green, indicating that he'd received the information, and he turned on the navigation. A sharp turn jerked him to the left, making him yelp in surprise, grabbing onto the armrests of his seat as Dani swerved to a sharp right to follow the coordinates sent to them by their blond friend, and he grabbed onto his seatbelt as he was suddenly pressed back into his seat as she hit the gas pedal, accelerating them.

Within minutes, the Spectre Speeder reached a screeching halt and Dani began navigating around in at a slower pace. "See anything, Dan?"

Danny looked around, his eyes narrowed as he searched for the wrapping paper, before his eyes lit up. "Yes! I see it! It's... in the Box Ghost's hands..." He groaned aloud. "Oh gosh no."

Dani parked the Speeder in mid-air and unstrapped her seatbelt, standing up and transforming. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go and get it!" she exclaimed.

"Police! Hands up and in the air!" A group of white, formless ghosts in white tactical gear suddenly surrounded both the Speeder and the Box Ghost, and they parted to let the large white form of Walker to pass through. He picked up the Box Ghost by the back of his overalls. "How many times have I told you that taking things that don't belong to you is a crime?" he asked, his Southern drawl enhancing his annoyance. "Last I checked, your name wasn't 'Maddie'. And you two punks; didn't I tell you that not wearing a seatbelt is a crime? And you, son, own a real-world item. I'm bringing all three of you in and confiscating your gizmos."

Danny quickly transformed, still strapped in, before raising both hands into the air. "We probably should have just flown, huh?"

"We needed the navigation," Dani muttered as the ghost warden waited expectantly for the two to leave the Speeder. "Great, fourteen and in the slammer... never thought I'd be a felon." She opened the door from inside and got out, followed closely by Danny behind her, both twins with their hands up in the air in surrender.

Walker scoffed, almost sounding amused as he grabbed both the twins together in his free hand. "Felony? Bah. This is just a misdemeanour. Now hold on tight, punks." He grew even larger, and the world around them twisted and warped as he teleported them into a compound of a tall stone fortress, with floodlights pouring down into the courtyard, barbed wire on the top of the walls, as well as a pink barrier covering the top of the walls. "Welcome to my prison, punks!"

The inmates in the courtyard looked up from what they were doing, and the Fenton twins both paled as Skulker stepped forward, a sneer on his face. Behind him, the Lunch Lady's meat-covered fists impacted each other in a threatening manner. Technus stood at the far end, the mad scientist ghost glowering angrily at the twins. Aside from them, more faceless ghosts also looked over inquisitively, looking quite intrigued at the reactions of the trio of ghosts, as well as the appearance of the twin phantoms.

Danny paled, as did Dani. "We're screwed."

* * *

"140 years, 5 months and 2 days," Dani muttered under her breath. "Really?

"141 years, 3 weeks and a day," Danny countered and shot her a glance. "You think?"

Dani shook her head, still trying to mess with the glowing green handcuffs that were wrapped around her wrists. "That's a long time for essentially driving without a license, don't _you_ think?" she challenged as the two of them were herded into the cafeteria by Walker's white-uniformed prison guards — or at least, that was what Dani thought they were. "Oh gosh, our parents are going to kill me for getting a record before I can drive, aren't they? I'm so dead, so dead!" she groaned.

"Only if we get home before they split up," the older twin muttered. "...you think we'll be allowed to stay together if they divorce?" he asked wearily. "Or will they split us up too so mum and dad get equal custody?"

Dani flinched as she shook her head. "I don't want to think about that," she whispered back as the prison guards left and left the twins alone in the cafeteria. "Oh gosh, Dan, heads up. Tin can incoming at ten o'clock."

"Tin— what?" Danny began to say, only to be suddenly yanked up off his feet by the back of his glaring orange jumpsuit. "Gah! Skulker!" he hissed, seeing the metal fist and the flaming green hair. He swung out with both fists, arcing towards the metal hunter, only for his gloved fists to hit the metal. It dented the hunter's metal body, though, from the older ghost boy's visible cringe, he was obviously quite in pain.

The younger of the ghost twins gasped, shooting over to him. "Danny!" she shouted out, swinging out with a roundhouse kick to Skulker's shin, again, denting the metal enough to make the ghostly hunter fall forwards, thankfully releasing Danny before the Phantom could be squashed under his bulk. Before Dani could grab her brother and split, though, she was yanked back as well and held face-to-face with Technus' green face. "Get your face out of mine, Shrek," the white-haired girl growled, spitting in his face to make him release her.

Ignoring the shriek from the technology-obsessed ghost, she and Danny moved together so that their backs were together so no one could give them the slip. "So, what now?" she asked her brother with a wince as she raised her fists up, inadvertently tugging her wrists too far apart from each other. "We're at a disadvantage at this point — there's no way we can fight all of these spooks when we're handicapped like this."

Danny grimaced. "Well..." his eyes glanced from side to side anxiously as the ghosts surrounded the twins, clearly intending on starting a prison fight with the two phantom twins as their resident punching bags. "We might not need to fight. Remember Desiree?" he asked his sister in a soft voice.

"Yeah, but Desiree didn't already hate us," Dani retorted. "These guys do. Why would they want to listen to us?"

"Why indeed, whelps?" Skulker sneered.

Danny bristled, moving in front of his sister protectively. "Because if you listen to me, then maybe we might not need to be trapped here together where we'd kill each other."

This stopped the Lunch Lady and Technus from advancing, and even Skulker seemed intrigued. The metal hunter raised a brow as he pulled back a little. "Carry on, whelp... you've got our interest."

The boy gave his sister a triumphant look. _See? I told you it could work,_ he teased gently. "Any of you guys heard of a... 'prison break' before?" he asked in a low voice, even though he couldn't see Walker's prison guards around.

Technus chortled. "Prison break? In Walker's prison? You only wish. He's the Ghost Zone's top law enforcer — the only reason we get to leave is when we're on parole or have finished our sentences. He's a good warden — a bit _too_ good." The mad scientist ghost folded skinny arms over his chest, his cuffs having just enough slack to allow him to do that.

Skulker looked thoughtful at the statement, though, rubbing his fiery chin. "No, no. Go on, ghost boy. What kind of plan do you have?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "What about a prison break?"

Danny looked at Dani. _What else is the best thing we can do to stir up trouble in the cafeteria? We need to attract attention so that the guards all come rushing in._

Dani perked up, and she grinned quite mischievously, her green eyes gleaming. "Cafeteria food fight. We start a food fight, use the slop they serve as ammunition so none of us exhausts ourselves before the actual fight gets here. Now from there, the guards will come in to stop us, so we use that slop—" she made a motion like she was chucking something in an arc, "— and toss it right in their faces. Preferably in the eyes, so they can't see us when we follow up with a knockout blow. Once there aren't any guards, we split," she declared confidently.

"That's... actually not too bad of a plan," Skulker grudgingly said. "Very well then, I'll follow that plan, but if it fails, we're taking it out on you," he warned.

The Lunch Lady mentioned something about hoping the cafeteria wasn't serving meat so she wouldn't feel bad about wasting it, and Technus something about wishing the slop wouldn't get into his tech, but the Phantoms were more concerned about Skulker's threat to make them mincemeat if the plan failed. That only meant the two had to get out of there even quicker, or else their heads would be on the chopping block.

"I get you," Danny said quickly, nodding curtly. "Shall we get started, then? The faster we act, the less chance they have of suspecting something's up."

And with that, the crowd dispersed, and the twins quickly lined up as lunch was being served. The workers behind the counter just looked thankful that the scene hadn't devolved into an all-out prison fight, and they hastily served grey slop to the ghosts in line before moving on. The Phantom twins took their trays, setting them down at the edge of the room, opposite where Skulker was seated at the other end, so they could line up their shot better.

_Ready? _Danny asked his sister, reaching to grab a handful of the colourless slop.

Dani just nodded with a quiet grin. _Let's get started. _"Hey, Skulky!" she hollered, standing up. "Eat slop, tin butt!" She chucked her handful of slop at his face with a battle cry, jumping onto the top of the table.

The slop smacked a passing ghost in the head, splattering the unsuspecting spectre, which quickly made it retaliate with more slop that Dani quickly ducked under so that it hit yet another ghost instead. Soon enough, the room had devolved into an all-out prison _food_ fight, slop flying everywhere as the ghosts began to cause a massive distraction.

Both the Phantom twins as well as Skulker hurried over to the doors, waiting for the doors to be opened by the prison guards, and not a few minutes later, the door opened, the white-clad guards filing into the room to try and stop the fight from worsening. A few lucky shots got the guards in the eyes and the twins took down some of them from behind, and Skulker physically beat down some unfortunate guards, searching for some keys.

"Keys!" Dani said, finding a pair on a fallen guard, and swiping them up, she unlocked Danny's cuffs before her brother returned the favour. Rubbing her wrists, she tossed the key over to Skulker. "Get out of here, tin man!" she shouted and pulling off the gaudy jumpsuit to reveal her normal black-and-white outfit underneath, she sprang into the air, followed by Danny as he ditched his own jumpsuit.

The Phantoms shot down the hallways, both knowing that they weren't free to go just yet. It wasn't long before they located Walker's office, and Dani proceeded to give the door a good kick with a loud vocalisation, knocking it down. "Where does he keep the confiscated items?" she asked.

Danny hurried in, looking around for a set of keys or any directions. His gaze swept across Walker's desk, now clean and tidy with only a few post-its under the glass surface of the pristine white desk. With one of them catching his eye, he quickly read it, marvelling at how easily things seemed to be falling into place for this escape. "It's just down the hall. Let's make a break for it and jump into the Speeder and go!" he announced, looking up at his sister.

Now with a destination, the Phantom twins darted out the hallway and flew down the hallway to get to the containment area for the confiscated items. Dani once more kicked down the door — she was getting pretty good at it, thanks to lessons from their mother — opening the entrance so that the twins were faced immediately with the chrome-plated body of the Spectre Speeder, the keys still in the ignition and the present on the driver's seat.

"Yes!" the girl cheered, hurrying over to the door as it opened for her, but before she could reach it, she was thrown back against the wall with a yelp.

Walker materialised from nowhere, turning his invisibility off, and growing to the maximum size allowed by the giant room, he grabbed both twins in his fists and held them against the wall of the room. "You two are really gettin' on my nerves," he drawled. "Can't a man just ask for some peace and order 'round these parts? Y'know what the Ghost Zone is like without order, punks? There's a reason ghosts don't keep pourin' outta that illegal portal you done built from your realm."

Danny stopped struggling, blinking a little as he considered it. "Wait, so the Ghost Zone actually does rely on your ghost police to keep order here?" he asked, sounding almost incredulous. His parents had always said that the Ghost Zone was endlessly vast, so he had figured that Walker's police force couldn't have been able to keep any order whatsoever.

Walker bristled, looking as offended as his blank features would let him. "Of course it does, son!" he snapped. "The Ghost Zone is a lawless place, but that's why I'm here. I keep this chaotic place in order. I don't like throwing people in prison, but it's the only way to keep people in line."

Dani raised a brow at him. "You ever consider that... I dunno, people don't like being given a rulebook the size of Yellow Pages and being expected to follow them?" she suggested. "You know... did you ever discuss this with them first?"

"Discuss it with them, pardon, what?" Walker arched a non-existent brow.

"Yeah, see, that's your problem. You're putting in all these laws without considering how things might work," Dani said. "Some laws can be good ideas — wearing a seatbelt is one of them, because it's safe — but when you go overboard with them, like... um, what was the one we talked about, Dan?"

"Not wearing stripes and polka dots together?" Danny suggested.

"No, the other one, not walking backwards or something. No idiot would wear stripes and polka dots together — that's a freaking abomination."

"Section 223, Article 31A, subpoint 3.2.1, rule 12: No walking backwards while eating ice cream on the second Tuesday of every month?" Walker offered.

Dani nodded enthusiastically, her ponytail bobbing. "Yeah, that one! Isn't that a _bit_ extreme, Walker, sir?" she said. "What's wrong with doing that on Tuesday and not Monday?" She shrugged. "Y'know, maybe go through the rulebook with some other people and shave off the more... um, ridiculous ones, so that people won't be so upset with seeing them?" she suggested lightly.

"What? My rules aren't ridiculous!" Walker exploded, knocking the Spectre Speeder slightly and making it move back towards the wall. Instead of crashing into it, though, it phased partially through the wall. "... are they? Bullet? Bullet!" he yelled out of the room. "Are my laws inane?"

_Dan, the Speeder! It's phasing through the wall of the room!_ Dani thought to her brother. _Does that mean that human-things can pass through ghost-things?_

_Well, we can give it a_ shot, Danny thought back, contemplative. Taking advantage of Walker being distracted, he transformed back, as did Dani, and the two leaned back, sinking into the wall, much to their delight.

"Bullet — hey, what? Where are you two punks doin'?" Walker barked.

Dani slipped free and dropped onto the ground. "Thanks for listening to us, Mr Walker, sir!" she called. "Please consider what we said, yeah? I'm sure you're a good man, but you could just do with some revision of those rules. Bye!" She dove through the wall and hanging onto the Spectre Speeder, just in time to grab the open door and climb into the vehicle. "Dan, hurry!"

Danny ran after her, running up the Spectre Speeder's wings and jumping into the vehicle as the door slammed shut behind him. "Thanks, Dani," he said as he quickly moved into the passenger seat, strapping himself in and moving to quickly call their friends again. "Terr, Penny, can you hear me?"

_"Roger that, Dannies!"_ Terrence called over the phone. _"Everything alright? Your radio silence was getting us worried."_

"We'll explain later, Terr," Dani said as she strapped in and began navigating the Spectre Speeder towards the Fenton Portal once more. "Coordinates home?"

_"Just hit the Autopilot,"_ their blond friend reassured her, and so she did.

The Speeder quickly accelerated, and they sped away from Walker's prison, even as the white-wearing warden called for his subordinates to ask about his laws. The twins looked at each other with a smile and gave each other a high-five with a holler of delight at escaping with the present intact.

"First home—" Danny said.

"— next, Arkansas!" Dani finished.

* * *

"As it turns out, Dani and I really didn't have much to worry about," Danny said, looking through his phone at Terrence and Penny through their conference call, with Dani looking over his shoulder. "Aunt Alicia got a divorce from crazy Uncle Uriah ten years ago — that's why mum went there. She was celebrating the ten-year anniversary. Mum and dad still love each other — mum was just a bit high-strung that day."

"The fact that the Box Ghost was hiding in the present when it got opened didn't hurt," Dani piped up. "Mum and dad went chasing after him merrily. But dad did get mum a pretty sweet gift, though. He had it all custom-made and everything."

_"Glad you two are fine, in that case,"_ Penny said with a smile. _"By the way, did anything ever come about of Walker?"_

Dani and Danny shared a glance. "Well," the older of the twins said, "he had one of his ghost workers send us a package by hand. It contained a whole new rulebook only a quarter of the original, and a letter saying that our prison sentence would be pardoned for the time being as thanks for letting him know about the situation, and to let him know if his rules are still being ridiculous."

"We're working on reading through the new rulebook now and so far, everything's pretty reasonable," Dani added. "It's nice to know that he took that advice to heart."

Terrence hummed. _"Wow, you guys are really doing something, huh? Saved that one Desiree genie last time, and now you're making reforms? Next thing you know, you'll reform Skulker!"_ He laughed, and so did the other three, knowing that the idea of that was ridiculous.

"Maybe," Danny said with a grin. "Maybe. Not being hunted anymore would be nice."

"We can dream," Dani said with a snicker.


End file.
